Face recipient smiling once again

LAS VEGAS – The world’s first face transplant patient is “already smiling” just months after her groundbreaking operation in November, a member of her surgical team told a conference of plastic surgeons Tuesday.

“It’s not perfectly symmetrical but it’s improving a lot since the results we saw three months ago,” said Benoit Lengele, a Belgian plastic surgeon who is part of a team of 50 doctors caring for Isabelle Dinoire.

Lengele showed doctors video taken three weeks ago of Dinoire, a 38-year-old mother of two, speaking and at one point, faintly smiling and chuckling.

“You see the smile is quite natural,” Lengele said.

In the video, Dinoire speaks about how she has feeling in the transplanted area and that she is exercising her face to regain motor functioning. A scar surrounding her nose and lips is barely visible and her partial smile is concentrated on the left side. She cannot yet fully close her lips.

She still smokes about one to five cigarettes a day, Lengele said, a practice he blamed on media attention.

“The British tabloids were very aggressive with her family and with the family of the donor,” he said. “The pressure was terrible for the patient.”

Dinoire lost much of her face when she was mauled by her pet Labrador last May while she was unconscious from drugs she said she had taken at a stressful time. Her lipless gums and teeth were permanently exposed, and most of her nose was missing. The surgery took 15 hours and gave her a new nose, mouth and chin.

Lengele said his surgical team has five more French patients who need face transplants and is awaiting regulatory approval, which can take several months.