French hospital performs face, hand transplants

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Dozens of doctors working in teams over 30 hours performed the world's first simultaneous partial-face and double-hand transplant during the weekend, Paris' Public Hospital authority said Monday. The authority described the recipient as a 30-year-old burn victim. The man, whose name was not released, was injured in a 2004 accident that left him with scars "preventing any social life," it said. The authority's statement said the operation, performed over Saturday and Sunday at the Henri Mondor hospital in the Paris suburb of Creteil, was the world's sixth partial-face transplant but the first to include hands as well. In a first, the upper half of the man's face, including the scalp, forehead, nose, ears and upper and lower eyelids, were transplanted. Previous facial transplants have attached the lower part of the face.