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Mar 5, 2008 4:21 pm US/Eastern
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Boston Hospital First To Offer Face Transplant
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
A Boston hospital will become one of the first medical centers in the world to offer face transplants.
The New England Organ Bank has authorized a team of surgeons at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston to perform partial facial transplants on certain patients with disfigured faces.
Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard, the French doctor who performed the first partial facial transplant, spoke at Brigham and Women's Hospital Wednesday.
Officials say the hospital is the first in the United States to receive permission for the procedure.
In 2004 the Cleveland Clinic became the first U.S. institution to approve the surgery and test it on cadavers.
To date, only three partial face transplants have been announced worldwide. Two were performed in France, and one in China.
Dubernard was also renunited with his former mentor and medical pioneer Dr. Joseph Murray, who performed the world's first organ transplant -- a kidney -- 54 years ago.
Dubernard did his fellowship under Murray at Brigham and Women's Hospital back in the 1960s.
"It feels great," Murray said. "That's why we became physicians, to help people. If we save lives and give lives, it's gratifying."
"The procedure is not a life-saving one, but a life-giving one," said Dr. Bohdan Pomahac. "It allows patients to return to their lives just as Isabel has done."
Officials say the Boston team could perform an operation as early as the next few weeks, but a recipient or donor might not be found for years.
Patients would be eligible only if they're kidney transplant recipients who have experienced facial burns, trauma, or skin cancer that has left them with "severe facial disfigurement." Kidney transplant patients are ideal because they already take anti-rejection drugs.
"We want to be very careful and thoughtful about whom we select as a patient," Pomahac told the Boston Globe. Pomahac is a plastic surgeon who heads the program at Brigham and Women's.
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(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)