Reason
05-06-2009, 02:58 PM
http://images.theage.com.au/2009/05/06/507296/mbw_transplant-420x0.jpg
YouTube - Woman on first US face transplant (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x-IIVElYhQ)
Gunshot victim Connie Culp can again hold her head up high.
FIVE years ago, a shotgun blast left a ghastly hole where the middle of her face had been. Five months ago, she received a new face from a dead woman.
Connie Culp stepped forward on Tuesday to show off the results of the first face transplant to have been performed in the United States.
Her expressions are still a bit wooden, but she can talk, smile, smell and taste her food again. Her skin droops in big folds that doctors plan to pare away as her circulation improves and her nerves grow, animating her new muscles, but Ms Culp had nothing but praise for those who made her new face possible.
"I guess I'm the one you came to see today," the 46-year-old Ohio woman said at a news conference at the Cleveland Clinic, where the operation was performed. But she added: "I think it's more important that you focus on the donor family that made it so I could have this person's face".
Up until Tuesday, Ms Culp's identity and how she came to be disfigured were a secret.
Her husband, Thomas, shot her in 2004, then turned the gun on himself. He went to prison for seven years. His wife was left clinging to life. The blast shattered her nose, cheeks, the roof of her mouth and an eye. Hundreds of fragments of shotgun pellet and bone splinters were embedded in her face.
A plastic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr Risal Djohan, got a look at her injuries two months later. "He told me he didn't think - he wasn't sure if - he could fix me but he'd try," Ms Culp recalled.
She endured 30 operations as doctors took parts of her ribs to make cheekbones and fashioned an upper jaw from one of her leg bones. She had countless skin grafts from her thighs. Still, she was left unable to eat solid food, breathe on her own, or smell.
Then, on December 10, in a 22-hour operation, Dr Maria Siemionow led a team of doctors who replaced 80 per cent of Culp's face with bone, muscles, nerves, skin and blood vessels from another woman who had just died. It was the fourth face transplant in the world, though the others were not as extensive.
Ms Culp said she wanted to help foster public acceptance of those who had suffered burns and other disfiguring injuries. It's a role she has already practiced, said clinic psychiatrist Kathy Coffman.
Once, while shopping, "she heard a little kid say, 'You said there were no real monsters, mommy, and there's one right there'," Dr Coffman said. Ms Culp stopped and said, "I'm not a monster. I'm a person who was shot," and pulled out her driver's licence to show the child what she used to look like.
No information has been released about the donor, but Dr Siemionow said her family were moved when they saw before-and-after pictures of Ms Culp.
Ms Culp left the hospital on February 5 but must take immunity-suppressing drugs for the rest of her life.
The clinic expects to absorb the cost of the transplant because it was experimental, doctors said. Dr Siemionow estimated it at $US250,000 to $US300,000 ($A337,000 to $A404,000).
AP
YouTube - Woman on first US face transplant (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x-IIVElYhQ)
Gunshot victim Connie Culp can again hold her head up high.
FIVE years ago, a shotgun blast left a ghastly hole where the middle of her face had been. Five months ago, she received a new face from a dead woman.
Connie Culp stepped forward on Tuesday to show off the results of the first face transplant to have been performed in the United States.
Her expressions are still a bit wooden, but she can talk, smile, smell and taste her food again. Her skin droops in big folds that doctors plan to pare away as her circulation improves and her nerves grow, animating her new muscles, but Ms Culp had nothing but praise for those who made her new face possible.
"I guess I'm the one you came to see today," the 46-year-old Ohio woman said at a news conference at the Cleveland Clinic, where the operation was performed. But she added: "I think it's more important that you focus on the donor family that made it so I could have this person's face".
Up until Tuesday, Ms Culp's identity and how she came to be disfigured were a secret.
Her husband, Thomas, shot her in 2004, then turned the gun on himself. He went to prison for seven years. His wife was left clinging to life. The blast shattered her nose, cheeks, the roof of her mouth and an eye. Hundreds of fragments of shotgun pellet and bone splinters were embedded in her face.
A plastic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr Risal Djohan, got a look at her injuries two months later. "He told me he didn't think - he wasn't sure if - he could fix me but he'd try," Ms Culp recalled.
She endured 30 operations as doctors took parts of her ribs to make cheekbones and fashioned an upper jaw from one of her leg bones. She had countless skin grafts from her thighs. Still, she was left unable to eat solid food, breathe on her own, or smell.
Then, on December 10, in a 22-hour operation, Dr Maria Siemionow led a team of doctors who replaced 80 per cent of Culp's face with bone, muscles, nerves, skin and blood vessels from another woman who had just died. It was the fourth face transplant in the world, though the others were not as extensive.
Ms Culp said she wanted to help foster public acceptance of those who had suffered burns and other disfiguring injuries. It's a role she has already practiced, said clinic psychiatrist Kathy Coffman.
Once, while shopping, "she heard a little kid say, 'You said there were no real monsters, mommy, and there's one right there'," Dr Coffman said. Ms Culp stopped and said, "I'm not a monster. I'm a person who was shot," and pulled out her driver's licence to show the child what she used to look like.
No information has been released about the donor, but Dr Siemionow said her family were moved when they saw before-and-after pictures of Ms Culp.
Ms Culp left the hospital on February 5 but must take immunity-suppressing drugs for the rest of her life.
The clinic expects to absorb the cost of the transplant because it was experimental, doctors said. Dr Siemionow estimated it at $US250,000 to $US300,000 ($A337,000 to $A404,000).
AP