In the United States

In the United States

In 2004, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, United States, became the first institution to approve this surgery and test it on cadavers.

In October 2006, surgeon Peter Butler at London's Royal Free Hospital in the UK was given permission by the NHS ethics board to carry out the face transplant. His team will select four adult patients (children cannot be selected due to concerns over consent), with operations being carried out at six month intervals.^[17]

In 2005, the Cleveland Clinic became the first US hospital to approve the procedure. In December 2008, a team at the Cleveland Clinic, led by Dr Maria Siemionow and including a group of supporting doctors and six plastic surgeons (Dr Steven Bernard, Dr Mark Hendrickson, Dr Robert Lohman, Dr Dan Alam and Dr Francis Papay) performed the first face transplant in the US on a woman named Connie Culp.^[18][19] It was the world's first near-total facial transplant and the fourth known facial transplant to have been successfully performed to date. This operation was the first facial transplant known to have included bones, along with muscle, skin, blood vessels, and nerves. The woman received a nose, most of the sinuses around the nose, the upper jaw, and even some teeth from a brain-dead donor. As doctors recovered the donor's facial tissue, they paid special attention to maintaining arteries, veins, and nerves, as well as soft tissue and bony structures. The surgeons then connected facial graft vessels to the patient's blood vessels in order to restore blood circulation in the reconstructed face before connecting arteries, veins and nerves in the 22-hour procedure. She had been disfigured to the point where she could not eat or breathe on her own as a result of a traumatic injury several years ago, which had left her without a nose, right eye and upper jaw. Doctors hoped the operation would allow her to regain her sense of smell and ability to smile, and said she had a "clear understanding" of the risks involved.

The second partial face transplant in the US took place at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston on April 9, 2009. During a 17-hour operation, a surgical team led by Bohdan Pomahac, MD, replaced the nose, upper lip, cheeks, and roof of the mouth - along with corresponding muscles, bones and nerves - of James Maki, age 59. Mr. Maki's face was severely injured after falling onto the electrified third rail at a Boston subway station in 2005. In May 2009, he made a public media appearance and declared he was happy with the result.^[20] This procedure was also shown in the eighth episode of the ABC documentary series Boston Med.