Isabelle Dinoire, born 1967, was the first person to undergo a partial face transplant, after her Labrador dog mauled her in May 2005. Prior to the operation, she could barely eat or speak, but after the operation, she can do both.
Dinoire's dog "chewed her face after she passed out from an overdose of sleeping pills." Some reports following the initial surgery claim that her daughter said that the black Labrador cross (named Tania) was "frantically" trying to wake Dinoire after she took sleeping pills in a suicide attempt, and Dinoire wrote about her suicidal feelings in her own memoir.
Dinoire's injuries affected her nose, lips, chin, and cheeks. She wore a surgical mask to cover the injuries on the lower part of her face, as the upper face was not affected.
Doctors and the media debated whether the donor and/or the recipient had attempted suicide, with reports stating that the donor had hanged herself. The Sunday Times, a British newspaper, stated that Dinoire said via a telephone interview that she tried to commit suicide. In her 2007 memoir, Dinoire stated that the donor had killed herself, which "gave Dinoire a feeling of sisterhood" with the donor.
An excerpt from the documentary made by the BBC in 2006 showing the surgical procedure of Isabelle Dinoire's first ever partial face transplant.
For the two-year anniversary, her doctors published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine detailing her operation and recovery. Complications have included kidney failure and two episodes of tissue rejection (one after one month and one after one year), which have been suppressed by drugs.
Dinoire will have to take the drugs for the rest of her life. A Boston doctor said if she stopped taking drugs, her scenario would be a "disaster", with the new face sloughing off over time. Part of her pre-operative screening included psychological evaluations to ensure she would be capable of maintaining her treatment regimen and also could accept and withstand the effects of having a dead person's face grafted onto her own.
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