Sad news to report from the medical community: The world’s first face transplant recipient, 49-year-old Isabelle Dinoire, died in April “after a long illness” according to doctors at Amiens Hospital in Northern France, where the cutting-edge procedure was performed back in 2005.
Dinoire, whose face had been mauled by her dog, received a graft that included the nose, lips and chin of a donor who was brain-dead, but unfortunately after more than 10 years, her body began to reject the transplant. The hospital did not provide details on Dinoire’s cause of death, but French newspaper Le Figaro reported that she suffered complications from her most recent operation, which led to a rejection of the new body tissue and eventually the development of two cancers as a result of anti-rejection medication.
