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China ready for face transplant operations
By Bao Xinyan (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-12-09 06:05
NANJING: Operations similar to the world's first partial face transplant in
France last month could be set for China.
After experts from a military hospital in the city announced earlier this
week that they have the ability to perform such surgery, the hospital has been
inundated with telephone inquiries, according to Chen Fang, a nurse with the
General Hospital of Nanjing Military Commands in east China's Jiangsu Province.
"We've been preparing for such operations ever since 2003," Hong Zhijian,
director of the plastic surgery section of the hospital told China Daily
yesterday.
"If there is a suitable patient at the moment, we can graft a new face for
him or her," he said.
Hong is the leader of a specialist team studying facial transplant in the
hospital.
Hong and his colleagues have been practising anatomization from 2003, and now
they are capable of dissecting a face, including subcutaneous fat, arteries,
veins and nerves, from a dead body.
"Although many people want to have facial transplants, not all of them are
suitable to have the operation," explained Hong. "That is why we are still
looking for the first patient."
The ability of patients to be able to adapt psychologically to their new face
would also need to be considered.
Apart from suitable patients, surgeons need to find facial transplants from
donors that can be compatible enough.
"When all of the conditions are right, we can carry out facial transplants at
once," Hong said confidently. "While we already have five or six candidates who
might be the first to have such a kind of operation, we still need time to study
their conditions."
He added that the biggest risk of such operations is the rejection by the
receiver's body immune system, which perceives tissue grafted from a donor as
alien.
(China Daily 12/09/2005 page3)
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