British plastic surgeons gear up to do pioneer face transplant
The next few days could make or break the hopes of a team of eminent plastic surgeons led by professor Peter Butler of London's Royal Free Hospital who are waiting for the final approval from The Royal Free hospital’s ethics committee to carry out a full fledged complete face transplant which would involve the complete replacement of a disfigured face with the tissues from a donor who is dead.
Although the hospital had granted permission to Prof. Butler to look out for possible candidates who may benefit from such a venture, final approval to proceed further is yet to be granted. There is a possibility of outright rejection on the grounds of being too risky a procedure or that it deems further research on one side or it can be sanctioned forth right following the steps of France which gave the green signal to a team of plastic surgeons to do a ‘partial’ face transplant just ten months ago replacing the nose mouth and chin of a lady who was mauled by a dog. The ethics authority in France did not give the surgeons to do a complete transplant on the grounds that it was too risky.Efforts in the UK to pursue complete transplants faced opposition in 2003 from the Royal College of Surgeons who argued that the impact on the psyche in case of failure could be devastating and more research should go into the new domain of full face transplants.
Prof. Butler claims that the 60% of the public are with him who recognize his work which spans the whole of last decade. He hopes to raise the £20,000 expected to cover each operation instead of expecting the NHS to be burdened with this whopping cost.
Doctors claim that the recipient’s face will not completely change over to the donor’s face but would be a hybrid of the two.
Source-Medindia
MST
