As more patients are experiencing successful face transplants, surgeons and medical professionals believe foot transplants may soon give people the chance to regain a lost limb.
The innovative surgery grew in popularity as surgeons across the globe began attempting restorative facial surgery in lieu of reconstructive surgery. Reconstructive facial surgery takes portions of excess body parts (like a thigh, back, or chest), and attempts to recreate the damaged face, but restorative surgery uses two teams of surgeons operating on a donor and a recipient. Dr. Julian Pribaz, a Boston surgeon who led a team that preformed the first facial transplant in the United States, said the restorative procedure produces a much better result.
“Reconstruction, where we take different parts of the body to make a face, always falls far short of the ideal. If you’re taking bits and pieces of your back, your belly and legs it’s never going to look anything like what it used it look like,” said Dr. Pribaz. “Whereas the possibility of actually taking something that God made, more or less – someone else’s face and transferring that – totally changes the game plan and the outcome.
On the heels of the successful facial transplant, Dr. Pribaz believes the operation may open the door for other transplants.
“I’m really looking at going from reconstruction, which is what we’ve been doing, to now a totally different paradigm with restoration,” Dr. Pribaz said.
Calling it an “experimental protocol”, Pribaz cited a recent case in Spain where a patient underwent a successful lower-limb transplant. He said most cases of reattachment involve a person having their own hand reattached after they suffer an accident, but the case in Spain could be a game-changer.
“The patient is making really reasonable recovery and so that’s another area that may be made available in the future to certain patients.”
Many people who suffer extreme disfigurement simply want to return to a life of normalcy, but that can be difficult after an accident. Dr. Pribaz and his team have conducted five facial transplants, aiding patients who have suffered severe electrical burns or been mauled by animals, and but he’s also helped restore self-confidence in his patients. He said lower-limb restoration may become more popular as those patients also look for ways to return to their pre-accident condition.
“To look normal, even human, is an amazing experience,” Dr. Pribaz said.
Dr. Silverman comments
I can’t count the number of times people have come to my office and joked with a serious tone: “My foot hurts so much, can you cut it off and give me a new one?” My standard line has been, “No, but, I can make the one you have feel better.”
Eventually, my response may have to change. It’s still in its initial phase, and much more research will need to be conducted before this type of surgery becomes widely accepted. Even then, it will be many years before we can make a transplant foot work better than a reconstructed one. Victims of trauma in which the entire limb was removed will be the first ones to undergo these procedures. I will be keeping an eye out for similar stories, as this has the chance to be a breakthrough in the medical community.
Related source: Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Associated Press