A team of 30 doctors in Barcelona have performed the first full face transplant to be carried out anywhere in the world.
As well as skin tissue, the patient received new cheekbones, facial muscles, teeth, palate, skin, nose, lips and jaw.
The operation was carried out on March 20th and took 24 hours in total. Before the surgery, the man, a farmer in his thirties, had been unable to swallow, speak or breathe properly after accidentially shooting himself in the face in 2005.
The man, who has not been named, is expected to remain in the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital for at least two months. He had been operated on nine times without satisfactory success and was therefore considered for a full face transplant.
The 10 operations performed previously had been only partial with the very first face transplant being carried out on a French woman, Isabelle Dinoire, in 2005.