France conducts world's third face transplant

The patient is suffeing from neurofibromatosis, in which the face is disfigured by grotesque lesions.

A 27-year-old man suffering from a disfiguring inherited disease has undergone a partial face transplant, the second to be conducted in France and only the third in the world, surgeons said on Tuesday.

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"The patient is doing well," said the lead surgeon, Laurent Lantieri, of the Henri Mondor University Hospital Clinic in Creteil, in the Paris suburbs.

The patient was a sufferer of neurofibromatosis, in which the face is disfigured by grotesque lesions.

According to the daily 'Le Parisien,' the 15-hour operation entailed transplanting the nose, mouth and chin and part of his cheeks.

The world's first partial face transplant was conducted in Amiens, France, in November 2005, on a 38-year-old Frenchwoman, Isabelle Dinoire, who had been badly bitten by her dog.

In April 2006, Le Guoxing, a 30-year-old Chinese farmworker who had been attacked by a bear, was given a partial face transplant at the Xijing Hospital in Xian, China.