French doctors Christian Dumontier (R) and Laurent Lantieri (L) give a press conference, on April 6 after they performed the world’s first simultaneous transplants of a new face and both hands including the wrists

In a world first, French surgeons replaced in a single operation the face and both hands of a man horribly disfigured by an accident, the hospital where the surgery took place announced Monday.

The operation, which began Saturday night, lasted 30 hours and required a medical team of more than 40, according to the Henri Mondor Hospital in Creteil, a suburb southeast of Paris.

“It is a success, he is in good condition,” one of the two head surgeons, Laurent Lanteiri, told AFP. “The patient is in post-op intensive care, which will last at least 15 days.”

Surgeons replaced the patient’s entire face above the lips, including the scalp, nose, ears and forehead.

“Everything was reconnected - the nerves, tendons, arteries and veins,” said Lantieri, who performed the face transplant.

Another team led by Christian Dumontier, a surgeon at the Saint Antoine Hospital in Paris, replaced both hands, including the wrists.

Doctors also succeeded in grafting new upper and lower eyelids - a world first.

“We will have to wait and see whether the nerves will grow back and give them mobility,” he said.

There have been five other face transplants to date, three of them in France. The most recent was completed on March 27 at the same hospital.

But this is the first time that a transplant of both hands and the face has been completed in one go.

In the operation last month, Lantieri replaced most of the face of a 28-year-old man severely disfigured by a shotgun blast.

Face and limb transplants must be undertaken on very short notice, as soon as medical teams are alerted to the availability of a donor who is brain dead.

A major public awareness campaign launched by the French government has increased the pool of potential donors, the hospital said.

The first successful face transplant was performed in France in 2005 on Isabelle Dinoire, a 38-year-old woman who had been mauled by her dog.

Source: AFP