Spanish face transplant was first including tongue and jaw (Roundup)

Aug 21, 2009, 11:24 GMT

Valencia/Madrid - The face transplant performed this week by Spanish surgeons was the first ever to include the tongue and jaw, doctor Pedro Cavadas said Friday.

Cavadas heads a medical team of more than 30 who completed the 16-hour operation on a 43-year-old man at La Fe hospital in the eastern city of Valencia on Wednesday.

The face transplant was a first in Spain, and the eighth in the world.

The patient was doing 'very well' and was expected to leave hospital within a week, Cavadas said.

The operation had been prepared for over a year with the patient, whom complications caused by radiotherapy had left without the lower half of his face 11 years ago, the doctor said.

The patient had reportedly suffered from cancer.

He was given a transplant extending from the lip corners to the base of the neck, which would allow him to speak clearly and to swallow, Cavadas said.

The patient was even expected to partially recover a sense of taste within a year.

The Spanish authorities meanwhile came under criticism for releasing information on the donor, whom the Health Ministry and regional officials had described as a 35-year-old male victim of a traffic accident.

Those details were sufficient for media to identify the donor whose nationality, profession, family situation and hobbies were reported on.

It was, however, illegal to reveal the identity of donors, press reports quoted legal experts as saying. The Health Ministry said the donor's family was planning legal action against those responsible for the leak.

Revealing the identity of a donor could damage the transplant patient's psychological health, the donor's family, and discourage other potential donors, a spokesman for the Health Ministry warned.

He promised that the ministry would be more careful about releasing information in the future.

Spanish experts described the face transplant as the eighth in the world, following similar operations that have been performed in France, China and the United States.

The world's first person to receive a face transplant was French woman Isabelle Dinoire in 2005.