Transplanting the face of a deceased person onto that of a living person might seem like something out of a science-fiction movie, but it’s not. The procedure, which actually does not include the entire face but mainly the nose, lips, and a portion of surrounding cheek tissue, has already been successfully performed on three patients outside the United States. Now the New England Organ Bank has authorized a surgical team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts to perform partial face transplants on eligible patients whose faces have been disfigured. The Brigham team is the first hospital in the United States to be authorized to perform such an operation.
To be eligible, recipients will have to be kidney transplant patients who have experienced facial burns, trauma, or skin cancer that has left them with severe facial disfigurement. Even though the team could perform the operation within the next few weeks, finding a donor and recipent who match the criteria could take months to years.
Recipients will have to take powerful drugs so their immune systems do not reject the donor’s tissue, which could expose them to infections and cancer.
Some critics question the need for such elective surgery, arguing that it is unethical to risk the life of a patient for a nonlifesaving procedure. But doctors say that partial face transplants help people with severe facial deformities to live more normal lives.

Source: The Boston Globe