Less than a month after doctors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston performed the nation’s first full-face transplant – they have done it again.
This time, 30-year-old Mitch Hunter from Speedway, Ind., received a new nose, eyelids, lips, facial animation muscles and the nerves that power them and provide sensation. It took a team of more than 30 doctors, nurses and other medical staff to complete the more than 14-hour operation, which took place last week.
A high-voltage electrical wire caused Hunter’s injuries during a 2001 car accident.
The donor family requested anonymity.
Lead surgeon Dr. Bohdan Pomahac said the procedure went smoothly, and they expect Hunter to have a successful recovery and new life.
Dallas Wiens, a Texas construction worker, received a new face at the hospital last month. In November 2008, Wiens was working on a cherry picker when his head touched a high-voltage power line. It sent so much electricity through his body that he suffered fourth-degree burns over his entire face.
About a dozen face transplants have been done worldwide, in the U.S., France, Spain and China.
The world's first face transplant, a partial face transplant, was done in France in 2005 on a woman mauled by her dog. The nation's first, also a partial, was at the Cleveland Clinic in 2008.
The Boston hospital has placed on a waiting list for a face and hands transplant Charla Nash, the Connecticut woman mauled by a friend's chimpanzee two years ago.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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