US plans first face transplant

US surgeons are to interview a shortlist of patients hoping to be the first to receive a face transplant.

Doctors in the US have already carried out the procedure on bodies donated for medical research.

Now the Cleveland Clinic team will choose a patient whose face is disfigured to receive a "new" face from a dead donor.

The chance it will work is around 50% and experts have expressed safety and ethical concerns about the procedure.

A new face

The recipient would have to take powerful anti-rejection drugs for life, which carry considerable long-term health risks, says the Royal College of Surgeons of England, which formed a working party to look at the issue earlier this year.

Also, it is not known how well an individual and their loved ones would adapt psychologically to a completely new face.

It is hard to predict what the person would look like after a face transplant.

The procedure would involve taking skin and underlying tissues from a dead donor and placing them on the living recipient.

Computer modelling suggests the new face would neither resemble the donor nor recipient's pre-injury self.

The face should take on more of the characteristics of the skeleton of the recipient than the soft tissues of the donor.

The recipient should be able to eat, drink and communicate again through a wide variety of facial expressions and mannerisms.

Picking a patient

The working party said it was not against facial transplants in theory, saying they could offer a major breakthrough in restoration of quality of life to those whose faces have been destroyed by accidents or disease.

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