In announcing her death Tuesday, the Amiens University Hospital in northern France said Dinoire’s experience “illustrates perfectly the high stakes of face transplants”.
Advertisement
Her family wanted the 49-year-old’s her death kept private.
The Le Figaro newspaper reported that Ms Dinoire suffered a new episode of rejection of the transplanted area past year “and she had lost part of the use of her lips”. Le Figaro also reported that she had to endure heavy anti-rejection treatments to keep her transplants, which they believe have impacted greatly on the occurrence of two cancers.
A divorced mother of two teenage daughters, Ms Dinoire said she was wrestling with personal problems at the time of the dog attack and “took some drugs to forget”.
Her face transplant paved the way for dozens of other procedures across the world.
At the time of Dinoire’s operation, a full face graft was often frowned upon as it was not deemed as a “life-saving” operation.
“I have a face like everyone else,”‘ she said.
Isabelle Dinoire succumbed to the disease in Amiens after a long struggle with her body’s rejection of the face that restored features that she had lost when her labrador mauled her. Duvauchelle and his team performed a triangular shaped cut on the donor’s skin and gave it to Dinoire, including a new nose, chin, and lips. I can open my mouth and eat.
Meningaud said patients have struggled with anti-rejection medications and require additional surgeries.
“I thought, ‘It’s me that has given it life, but the hair is hers.’Sometimes I put my hand to my face to check that it’s still there”. Her surgeon, Professor Bernard Devauchelle, had lauded the operation a success calling it a “masterstroke”.
The decision to perform the operation sparked a fierce debate over the ethics of the operation. And they used a lower part of the face from a woman who committed suicide.
Advertisement
Oddly, the brain-dead donor whom she received the graft from reportedly hanged herself.
