A pioneering hand transplant performed in France last week could pave the way for a human face transplant, New Scientist magazine said yesterday.
The weekly magazine said the US plastic surgeon, Dr John Barker of the University of Louisville in Kentucky, predicts it could happen within five years.
"Ultimately, Barker predicts that the greatest demand for such transplants will come from patients who lose their faces in a fire, or through disease, shotgun wounds or dog attacks," the magazine said.
Plastic surgeons already use skin and muscle grafted from other parts of a patient's body to repair damaged faces, but Dr Barker believes they could get much better results by transplanting the facial skin, muscles, nerves and lips of a dead donor of the same age.
The knowledge gained from the hand and arm transplant in France, which involved grafting muscles, nerves, bones and skin from a donor, could speed up transplants of other body parts.
If the operation is a complete success what was once science fiction or the plot of the Hollywood blockbuster, Face Off, might become a reality. In the action thriller, which was a big hit in the United States, surgeons swapped the faces of actors John Travolta and Nicholas Cage.
Rejection of donor tissue or organs is the biggest problem in transplant surgery. Mr Clint Hallam, the Australian businessman who received the donor arm and hand, will be taking powerful anti-rejection drugs for the rest of his life.