Face Transplant Recipient: Thanks

Doctors Say Patient Says 'Merci'; Ethics Of Surgery Questioned

(CBS/AP) 
It's likely she will remain on medication for the rest of her life.

"There are some techniques that may become available in the future but right now, yes," Costantino told Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen.

The patient will not end up looking like the donor, because of her underlying bone structure, but she will also not look like herself.

However, "she was looking at a new person the day after the dog took her face," Costantino said.

That's part of the controversy, reports CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar. Such surgery speaks directly to the issue of identity. Some specialists argue other reconstructive techniques might have been more ethical, and question what would have happened if the transplant had failed.

"The outcome then would probably be worse than what you've got before you started," said Dr. Timothy Miller, chief of plastic surgery at UCLA.

Carine Camby, director-general of the agency under the French health ministry that coordinates organ procurement, said normal reconstructive surgery could not have been used in this case.

"It is precisely because there was no way to restore the functions of this patient by normal plastic surgery that we attempted this transplant," Camby said. "She could no longer eat normally, she had great difficulty speaking and there is no possibility with plastic surgery today to repair the muscles around the mouth which allow people to articulate when they speak and not spit out food when they eat."

However, a surgeon involved in the advance evaluation of the case suggested traditional techniques may not have been impossible.

"We could have tried (reconstructive surgery)...The aesthetic result would have been average ... This was the search for a better functional and aesthetic result," said Dr. Guy Magalon, director of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Conception Hospital in Marseilles. He was the consultant on reconstructive surgery to the French Agency of Health Security and Products for a review panel it convened in June to look at the graft proposal.

Dubernard led teams that performed a hand transplant in 1998 and the world's first double forearm transplant in January 2000.

The hand transplant recipient later had it amputated. Doctors said the man failed to take the required drugs and his body rejected the limb.

Dr. Laurent Lantieri, an adviser to the French medical ethics panel, said he feared this operation could turn out like that first hand transplant if the patient is psychologically unstable.

Dr. Jean-Pierre Chavoin, secretary general of the French society of plastic surgery, noted that Lantieri had planned to do a face transplant himself but was beaten to it.