Barcelona hospital carries out "world's most complex" face transplant

The Val d'Hebron University Hospital confirmed on Monday that it had carried out the "world's most complex" face transplant.

The operation, which was done in February, saw a team of 45 work for 27 hours to reconstruct the lower face, neck, mouth, tongue and throat of a 45-year-old man who had been suffering from an illness known as 'arteriovenous malformation' for around 20 years.

This illness had left the patient, who does not wish to be identified, hugely disfigured, and according to the hospital, he "had important functional alterations, such vision and speech problems, and the risk of severe bleeding that put his life in danger."

"This is the first time that a transplant of this complexity is performed in the world," confirmed the hospital in a press statement.

The statement added that the operation had been a total success, "the patient evolution after the surgery was successful. It was similar to any transplant patient at the hospital. Now he is already at home and only comes to the hospital for routine checkups."

The recipient of the transplant had previously been examined in other hospitals, such as the Harvard Medical School, but they had considered his condition to be inoperable, whereas in Val d'Hebron, an operation had been thought to be the only possible treatment.

In 2010 the world's first full face transplant was carried out on a man disfigured in an accident in the hospital. Endit