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Face transplant
A face transplant is a skin graft that involves replacing part or all of a patient's face with a donor face. The world's first full-face replant operation was on a nine year-old girl, whose face was ripped off when her hair was caught in a thresher. The grass-cutting machine amputated her face and scalp. The machine caught one of the girl's braids and then pulled her head in. Her mother witnessed the accident. The patient arrived at the hospital unconscious with her face in two pieces in a plastic bag. The operation was successful, although the child was left with some muscle damage as well as scarring around the perimeter where the facial skin was sutured back on. The world's first partial face transplant on a living human was carried out on November 27, 2005 by a team of surgeons led by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard and Professor Bernard Devauchelle in Amiens, France. The patient underwent surgery to replace her original face that had been ravaged by her dog. A triangle of face tissue from a brain-dead human's nose and mouth was grafted onto the patient.
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