MY NEW FACE

A WOMAN who received the first face transplant appeared in public today.

Isabelle Dinoire, 39, said she can speak, eat and laugh again, adding: "Now I have a face like everyone else."

The mother of two had a large part of her face torn off when she was savaged by her dog.

She was given a new nose, lips, cheeks and chin taken from a suicide victim during lengthy surgery last year in northern France.

Appearing for the first time in public, Ms Dinoire, a mother of two, said she is slowly gaining more movement in her new face and is looking forward to living a "normal life with my family".

Her graft has taken well, although she speaks with a lisp. She said: "Before the operation every day that I went out I was faced by the looks and strange stares of other people because of my face mask.

"I hope that my operation will be able to help other people." She told how she will have to cope with drugs to suppress her immune system for the rest of her life but feels it is a price worth paying.

She said: "After a while I felt my lips, my nose and my mouth. Now I can open my mouth and eat.

"Sure, I've got to continue with lots of pyshiotherapy and personal work to reactivate all the muscles and above all else, to continue to take immunosuppressants.

"The treatment was long but I didn't suffer."

The operation was carried out at a hospital in Amiens led by Professor Jean-Michel Duberard, who also pioneered hand transplants.

The team hope to carry out more similar partial face transplants, which are allowed under French regulations.

Doctors say the transplant was necessary because traditional skin grafts taken from the patient's body would not have given the movement needed for the delicate facial tissue to function properly.

The Evening Standard exclusively revealed the operation had taken place in November last year.

Now a British team led by Professor Peter Butler has been given the go-ahead to choose a UK patient who will undergo the first full facial transplant. Ms Dinoire thanked her medical team and described how she came to be so badly mauled by her pet dog.

Ms Dinoire said: "After a very difficult week with lots of personal problems I took some medicine to forget.

"Then I suffered an illness and I fell on the ground against a cupboard.

"When I woke up I tried to light a cigarette and I could not understand why I couldn't put the cigarette between my lips.

"It was then that I saw a pool of blood and the dog by its side."

Ms Dinoire has always claimed that her labrador cross breed bit her features off trying to wake her. She continued "I went to look at myself in the mirror and there I could not believe what I saw, it was horrible. After that day my life changed.

"At the hospital after a month and a half I hadn't left my room. I was scared of looking at the others.

"I couldn't eat normally, I had to eat liquid food but I could not open my mouth more than three millimetres. After much exercise severe therapy and session of endomology I had an opening of 1.9 centimetres just before the operation.

"Little by little the doctors explained their project of a face graft and gave me a lot of confidence. I also succeeded in going home."

Ms Dinoire said she is so delighted with her appearance now she hopes she can start a new life.

She said: "Following my exit from hospital I want to start a normal life again with my family and I want to get a job. Indeed I want to have a normal life.

"I want to also say that none of this would be possible without having had a donor.

"I really want to pay homage to the family of the donor."

The donor has been named as Maryline Saint Aubert, 46, who hanged herself in her home town of Cambrai, South of Lyon.

Ms Dinoire is understood to have signed a deal for a Hollywood film and book based on her experiences.

(c)2006. Associated Newspapers Ltd.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.