Dog Attacks

By now most people have heard the news that doctors have performed the first face transplant on a patient in France - replacing the nose, mouth and chin from the face of a brain dead woman whose family permitted the operation.

Up until recently, the recipient was reportedly the victim of a dog attack. However news is circulating now that the damage was caused after the recipient attempted suicide by taking a pill overdose, and the dog - described in various reports as either a a labrador or rottweiler - caused her injuries while trying to awaken her. One news outlet credited the woman's 17 year old daughter as the source for this suicide scenario, however so far the hospital is denying the reports.

Photos have also been released of 38 year old Isabelle Dinoire before the attack last June and a post-operative photograph appeared on the front page of the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

DEC 6 UPDATE: Unsubstantiated sources report the face donor - who became brain dead after falling in a coma - had also attempted suicide by hanging.


FEB 6, 2006 UPDATE: Face Transplant Woman Meets the Media

According to CNN, the woman who received the world's first partial face transplant thanked her doctors as she stepped before the press for the first time since the groundbreaking surgery.

"I hope the successful operation will help other people like me to live again," said Isabelle Dinoire, 38, who was disfigured when she was attacked by her pet Labrador retriever.

"I now have a face like everyone else," she told reporters Monday at the hospital in Amiens in northern France where the surgery was performed. "A door to the future is opening."

Her speech was heavily slurred and hard to understand, and she appeared to have difficulty moving or closing her mouth.

But the divorced mother of two teenage daughters told how a dog bite left her disfigured, and she thanked the family of the donor who gave her new lips, a chin and nose.

Fine scar lines could be seen from her nose over her cheekbones down to her jaw where the tissue was attached in a 15-hour operation on November 27.

"I can open my mouth and eat. I feel my lips, my nose and my mouth," she said...

For the complete CNN article click here.

Addendum:
Here is a photo of the face donor Maryline Saint-Aubert from 1976 - at the time of her death, apparently a suicide, she was 46 years old.

Click here to read about TRUE Fatal Dog Attacks!