The recent hand transplant in France has given rise to a new question: Can face transplants be far behind?
The October 3 edition of New Scientist magazine quoted a Kentucky surgeon who plans to carry out the first hand transplants in the United States as saying that the techniques needed for hand transplants could eventually be used for face transplants.
John Barker of the University of Louisville predicted "that the greatest demand for such transplants will come from patients who lose their faces in a fire, or through disease, shotgun wounds, or dog attacks," New Scientist said. "Surgeons currently rebuild faces using flaps of skin and muscle taken from elsewhere on the patient's body. Barker says they could get a much better-looking result by transplanting the facial skin, muscles, nerves, and lips of a dead donor the same age."
However, the magazine also quoted John Williams of the Royal College of Surgeons in London as predicting that "few patients will have injuries severe enough to make such operations worthwhile."
Meanwhile, Clint Hallam, the Australian patient who received the right hand and forearm of a dead donor in Lyon, France, on September 23, is reportedly faring well.
A lengthy article in the New York Times on October 6 reported that Mr. Hallam told his surgeons two days before the operation that he had a criminal record. "And far from losing his right hand in a logging accident, as initial reports had it, Australian newspapers said he lost it using a circular saw in a New Zealand jail," the paper said.
Regardless, learning about the patient's background did not interfere with the surgeons' plans to carry out the operation.
In addition to discussing Mr. Hallam's background, the New York Times described a rivalry between the international team of surgeons who conducted Mr. Hallam's operation and Dr. Barker's Louisville team. Dr. Earl Owen of Sydney, who headed the surgical team in Lyon, denied being in a race with the Louisville group. "They may well be in a race with us, but they will never catch up," he said in a quote reported by the newspaper.
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