CHICAGO (Reuters) – A team of U.S. doctors have performed the first near-total face transplant in the United States, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio said on Tuesday.
The hospital did not release details but said in a statement it would hold a news conference on Wednesday.
A French team led by Jean-Michel Dubernard of Lyon University was the first to perform a partial face transplant in November 2005, on Isabelle Dinoire, then 38.
In that operation, surgeons used donor tissue to replace her nose, cheeks, mouth, lips and chin, which had been torn off by her own dog six months earlier.
