Woman with flesh-eating disease gets a face transplant from assisted death donor
A woman who underwent an assisted dying procedure in Spain donated her face to a woman who suffered from a deadly flesh-eating disease.
The recipient, named Carmen, suffered necrosis after an insect bite, but will now have a new face transplant after a donor took her own life through assisted suicide.
The pioneering facial transplant took place in a Barcelona hospital and saw more than 100 medical professionals take part.
Carmen, the recipient, was unable to eat, speak or see after her diagnosis, but is said to be healing well.
She told reporters: ‘When I’m looking in the mirror at home, I’m thinking that I’m starting to look more like myself.’
The hospital’s transplant coordinator, Elisabeth Navas, said: ”Someone who has decided to end their life dedicates one of their last wishes to a stranger and gives them a second chance of this magnitude.’
She added that the donor, who is unnamed, showed a level of maturity that ‘leaves one speechless’.
Face transplants are a meticulous operation, and involve finding donors who match the sex, blood group and head size of the patient.
From there, doctors transplant the tissue and reconnect blood vessels so the skin can continue to grow.
The world’s first full-face transplant in 2010 was conducted at the hospital where Carmen underwent her operation.
One British woman also suffered the same flesh-eating necrosis bacteria that Carmen suffered from, losing half of her face.
Donna Corden’s skin turned black, her kidneys failed, and she stopped breathing after a scratch from a fall turned into bacteria that ate away at her skin, meaning she needed a skin graft from her thigh.
Doctors had no choice but to cut half the tissue from Donna’s face in order to prevent the deadly infection from spreading to her brain.
Her children were told to ‘prepare for the worst’, but doctors managed to save Donna’s life by cutting away the rotten flesh.
But days later, she developed sepsis, began to suffer from organ failure and was placed in an induced coma.
‘My chances of surviving were very, very slim. It was an absolute nightmare,’ she said.
But she survived and woke up in intensive care at Leeds General Infirmary.
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