Paris – It was a startling feat of medicine, the world’s first partial face transplant.
But in the weeks since the groundbreaking surgery last month, the operation has taken a back seat to a very public argument over the ethics of the operation and the psychological health of the 38-year-old recipient.
Meanwhile, doctors say that the carnival atmosphere is complicating the recovery of the woman who received the new face, identified as Isabelle Dinoire.
“Clinically, she’s excellent,” Dr. Bernard Devauchelle, the surgeon who performed the transplant, said Monday. But psychologically, he added, she is only “good enough,” because of the intense media pressure she is under.
Among the most disturbing aspects of the debate are conflicting reports from doctors about whether the transplant was the result of two suicide attempts, one successful by the donor, and one failed by the recipient.
Reports of both suicide attempts surfaced within days of the transplant and were confirmed by Olivier Jarde, an orthopedic surgeon at the hospital in Amiens, where the face transplant was performed.
He repeated his assertion on Tuesday that the donor had hanged herself but declined to say where the information had come from.
The family of the donor, who has been identified as Maryline Saint Aubert, 46, from the northern city of Cambrai, 20 miles from Dinoire’s home, told the funeral director who handled the burial that her death was accidental.
Devauchelle, who removed the part of the face that he later transplanted onto Dinoire, said that he did not know how the donor died but that he saw no evidence of hanging.
As for Dinoire, several doctors, neighbors and others familiar with the case said in interviews with The New York Times that she had herself been depressed and they suggested that it was a suicide attempt that led to the horrible disfigurement the partial face transplant is meant to correct.
Local newspapers have quoted one of Dinoire’s daughters as saying that on the night of May 27, the family dog scratched and bit away her mother’s face after she had tried to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping pills.
Britain’s Sunday Times has written that Dinoire herself confirmed the fact this month in a brief telephone interview.
Those assertions have been adamantly denied by Dr.Jean-Michel Dubernard, the flamboyant French politician in charge of Dinoire’s post-transplant treatment.