Beneficiaries of Face Transplant
People with faces disfigured by trauma, burns, disease, or birth defects might aesthetically benefit from the procedure. Professor Peter Butler at the Royal Free Hospital first suggested this approach in treating people with facial disfigurement in a Lancet Article in 2002. This suggestion caused considerable debate around the ethics of this procedure at that time.
The alternative to a face transplant is to move the patient's own skin from their back, buttocks or thighs to their face in a series of as many as 50 operations to regain even limited function and a face that is often likened to a mask or a living quilt.
L. Scott Levin MD FACS, Chair, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, has described the procedure as "the single most important area of reconstructive research."
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