Ohio woman first to receive face transplant in U.S.

Tuesday May 5, 2009 (foodconsumer.org) -- Connie Culp, a 46-year-old Ohio woman, has become the first recipient of a face transplant in the United States. The controversial procedure has given Ms. Culp the ability to “drink from a cup, eat solid food [and] smell and breathe through her nose,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Ms. Culp was injured by a shot-gun blast in 2004 when her husband shot her in the face before using the gun on himself in an attempted murder-suicide. Both of them survived the ordeal, and he is now serving a seven-year sentence. Aside from the medical and quality-of-life benefits the surgery has offered, Ms. Culp’s face is now more expressive as she is able to smile, frown and make use of other expressions.

The doctors reinforced the message that Ms. Culp’s life has been changed dramatically. Before the surgery, she underwent numerous skin grafts and was unable to eat solid food, breathe independently or smell. She even needed a tube inserted in her windpipe to breathe. The doctors replaced 80% of Ms. Culp’s face over the course of a twenty-two hour operation. The doctors had to replace bone, muscle, nerves, skin and blood vessels. It stands as the sixth face transplant in the world; there are now seven in total.

Ms. Culp stresses that “it’s more important that you focus on the donor family that made it so I could have this person’s face.” Her experiences lead her to express a profound message as well. She told reporters, “when somebody has a disfigurement and don’t look as pretty as you do, don’t judge them . . . because you never know. One day it might all be taken away.”

While the surgery was successful, it is not quite the end of a long road of medical procedures. She still has to stick to a strict anti-rejection medication regimen and her doctors plan to pare away large bits of skin that droop from both sides of her face, reports the Huffington Post. 

The Cleveland Clinic, where the surgery was performed, plans to cover the cost of the surgery because it was experimental. The cost of the surgery lies between $300,000-400,000. The doctors took the donor face from a cadaver.

While face transplants often give rise to a list of ethical complaints, Ms. Culp’s surgery stands to avoid many of them as it was done for medical reasons (rather than personal or aesthetic reasons), states the Wall Street Journal. Still, Ms. Culp’s appearance has dramatically improved: when addressing reporters she joked, “five years later I got me my nose.”

(By Will Levine, and edited by Heather Kelley)