PARIS — A burn victim who received a simultaneous partial face and double hand transplant in a French hospital has died, the Paris Public Hospital authority said Monday.
The man, whose name has not been made public, died June 8 after suffering a heart attack during follow-up surgery to the April 4 transplant.
The authority had said it was the world’s sixth partial face transplant but the first to include hands as well.
The authority had described the recipient as a 30-year-old man hurt in an accident that left him with scars that made it difficult to have a social life.
The man did not show signs of rejecting the transplanted organs at the time of his death, the authority said.
However, a bacterial inflammation appeared about four weeks after the original transplant.
The man had expressed satisfaction upon seeing his new face and hands before he died, the statement said.
The man’s upper face had been reconstructed, with scalp, forehead, nose, ears and upper and lower eyelids attached. The man also received a new set of hands, attached above the wrist. All the relevant nerves, tendons, arteries and veins were reconnected.
The authority said it continued to have confidence in medical teams carrying out clinical research and tissue transplants for the face.
A woman, Isabelle Dinoire, underwent the first partial face transplant in 2005 in Amiens, France. Other recipients include another European, a Chinese farmer and a woman operated on last year in Cleveland.
