First Life-Saving Face Transplant On Man

Doctors in Poland say they have performed a total face transplant on a 33-year-old man whose face was torn off in an accident with stone-cutting machinery.
Surgeons at the Oncology Center in Gliwice said the 27-hour operation was performed on May 15, just weeks after the accident.
The head of the team of doctors, Adam Maciejewski, said it was the world's first life-saving face transplant carried out so soon after the damage.Graphic photos inside

The accident took place on April 23.
Previous transplants have taken months or years to prepare.
A computer-generated image, provided by the hospital, shows the extraordinary damage the man suffered as a result of the industrial accident.

 It required surgery to reconstruct his face, jaws, palate and the bottom of his eye sockets.
But incredibly, the emergency procedure appears to have been a success.
A picture of the patient taken yesterday, six days after the surgery, showed him making a thumbs-up gesture from his hospital bed.

A Spanish farmer had the world's first full-face transplant in March 2010.
Oscar, whose surname was not revealed to protect his privacy, had blown most of his face off with a gun in the hunting accident. He was left unable to breathe, swallow or talk properly.