Surgeon To Try Face Transplants

To Be Offered To Disfigured Patients

(AP) 
Siemionow, 55, went to medical school in Poland, trained in Europe and the United States, and has done thousands of surgeries in nearly 30 years. The success of this one depends on picking the right patient.

She wants a clear-cut first case. No children because risks are too great. No cancer patients because anti-rejection drugs raise the risk of recurrence.

"You want to choose patients who are really disfigured, not someone who has a little scar," yet with enough healthy skin for traditional grafts if the transplant fails, she said.

Dr. Joseph Locala, a clinic psychiatrist, will decide whether candidates are mentally fit. His chief concern: making sure they realize the risks and are well emotionally.

"I'm looking for a psychologically strong person. We want people who are going to make it through," he explained.

Dr. James Zins, chairman of plastic surgery, expects to be among the 10 to 12 doctors involved in the transplant and has been screening patients.

"We get some pretty strange calls from people who are really not candidates," he said.

Matthew Teffeteller, who lives south of Knoxville, Tenn., might seem an ideal one. Three years ago, he was burned in a horrific car crash that killed his pregnant wife. Despite many surgeries, his face still frightens children. Yet he wouldn't try a transplant.

"Having somebody else's face ... that wouldn't be right. I'd be afraid something would go wrong, too. What would you do if you didn't have a face? Could you live?"

Bioethicist Carson Strong at the University of Tennessee wonders, too.

"It would leave the patient with an extensive facial wound with potentially serious physical and psychological consequences," he wrote last summer in the American Journal of Bioethics.

Siemionow said critics should admit that risks and need for the transplant are debatable.

"Really, who has the right to decide about the patient's quality of life?" she asked. "It's very important not to kind of scare society....We will do our best to help the patient."