Donor operation for face transplantation

The first clinical face allotransplantation was performed by Devauchelle et al in 2005, and currently 13 facial allotransplantations have been performed worldwide. Reports on almost half of the cases were published in the literature, focusing on technical details of facial allograft inset to the recipient face. There are only few reports describing technical details of recovery of the facial allograft from the human donor. In this article, we summarize our cadaveric studies describing the methods of facial flap recovery in the cadaveric model and as well as mock facial transplantation. Based on our experience with the first case of face transplantation, we describe the sequence of facial graft procurement from the human donor and compare similarities and differences between our case and previously published cases. Furthermore, we discuss different methods of restoration of the donor face and have outlined proposed guidelines for the sequence of donor operation for facial graft procurement.