What Has Become of the First Face Transplant Patient?
May 24, 2006 — -- Six months ago, on Nov. 27, 2005, medical history was made when a 38-year-old French woman received the world's first face transplant.
ABC News' Barbara Walters went to Paris to learn more and meet one of the doctors who was part of a team that performed this medical miracle.
Watch the one-hour "Primetime" special on Thursday, May 25, at 10 p.m.
The "Primetime" special will include the ABC News-acquired French documentary that follows Isabelle Dinoire's experience -- from entering the hospital, rehabilitation and an exclusive look at her new face.
Dinoire was a divorced, unemployed factory worker who lived in government housing with two teenage daughters. The eldest, 17, left to live with her boyfriend.
Dinoire was distraught and swallowed a handful of pills that left her unconscious. She awoke to find out that, while unconscious, her nose and lips had been bitten off by her own black Labrador -- which was ultimately euthanized.
It was only when she attempted, in vain, to smoke a cigarette that Dinoire realized she was without half a face. She could barely speak or eat -- the muscles of her cheeks were no longer anchored to those around her lips.
Doctors suggested a partial transplant, and, despite the risks, Dinoire immediately agreed. But time was of the essence.
Could Barely Eat or Speak
Five months later, doctors were still waiting for a matching donor. The toughest part of such a transplant is to find a donor with the right tissue, compatible color and quality of skin.
The waiting time was put to good use, though, with intense physiotherapy to try to stem Dinoire's deteriorating condition. As her wounds healed and scarred over, her face was hardening and losing muscle function, making a transplant more difficult.
"Unfortunately time is against us in this regard because she is inevitably losing a little something all the time, that's only logical," said reconstructive surgeon Dr. Cédric d'Hauthuille. "Then another phenomenon that appears after a while is retraction, in other words, a wound tends to close up all by itself.
"And over the five or six months she's been in the ward, we can already see she has difficulty opening her mouth and that her lips and nostrils are retracting. That's only going to make rehabilitation even more difficult later on."
Dr. Sylvie Testelin, also a reconstructive surgeon, said that Dinoire's retraction was only getting worse as time went on. "The skin has retracted, everything has retracted as if it were ... it's a continuous struggle for her to open her mouth."
It was an excruciating time for Dinoire. "At the start I couldn't eat anything except mashed food because I couldn't open my mouth any more," she said. "There was just enough room to get a small spoon in."
Doctors were scrambling to find a donor by Christmas.
"There is always a time limit to find a donor for any type of transplantation, but … in this case, as the wound was retracting, she couldn't eat," said Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard, who eventually performed the surgery. "She couldn't speak any more because she could not articulate you know the nose, the opening of the mouth was very difficult to maintain, because of the retraction of the wound.
"So it's why we thought that it was the more we were waiting ... the more difficult the surgery would be."
A donor was finally found. A 46-year-old brain-dead woman, Maryline Saint Aubert, on life support after an attempted suicide by hanging, donated her face and other organs.
After 15 hours of surgery, medical history was made with the successful transplant. Find out what Dinoire is doing now, her emotional state and what she looks like on "Primetime" on Thursday.