Halifax doctors aim to perform Canada’s first face transplant

A group of doctors is pushing to make Nova Scotia’s capital city the prime destination for face transplants in Canada.

The costly procedure has yet to be performed north of the 49th parallel, but that will change soon if Halifax head and neck surgeon Mark Taylor and his colleagues have their way.

“The techniques themselves are fairly similar to what we’re doing already,” Taylor told Global National‘s Ross Lord. “So we already have the surgical expertise here to move forward with this.”

Taylor says the groundbreaking operation is actually not as complicated as we might think. Removing a face is a combination of three surgeries routinely performed for other afflictions, like cancer.

“The patients right now that would be potential candidates would be trauma-related: burns, accidents, people who are missing the central mid-face.”

Connie Culp was the first American to receive the groundbreaking surgery after her husband shot her in the face in 2004. He then turned the gun on himself.

They both survived. He went to prison, and she was left to fight for her life in the hospital. The blast shattered her nose, cheeks, the roof of her mouth and an eye. Hundreds of fragments of shotgun pellet and bone splinters were embedded in her face. She needed a tube into her windpipe to breathe. Only her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip and chin were left.

Thirty procedures rebuilt her skull and face. The tracheotomy tube was removed and she can now breathe on her own.

Culp has been very pleased with the results. In a 2011 interview, she said, “I feel great. I’m starting to get my spunk back.”

“At first I was tired, but now I feel really good.”

This past March, University of Maryland physicians said they performed the most extensive face transplant ever on a man from Virginia.

Richard Lee Norris suffered similar injuries to Culp’s, after he was disfigured in a 1997 gun accident. He spent 15 years wearing a mask and living as a recluse before he received a new face, nose, teeth and jaw.

A week after his surgery, he started to feel his face and was already brushing his teeth and shaving, doctors said. He also regained his sense of smell, which he had lost after the accident.

They haven’t all been success stories, though. Some people have experienced setbacks and complications. Others have even died after rejections.

The cost – likely about $1 million per surgery – puts additional strain on a health care system already struggling to pay for existing services.

“There has to be an exploration of both the resource cost to the hospital, and the ethical issues involved,” Dr. Manohar Bance of Halifax’s QEII Health Sciences Centre says. He adds that various medical professionals, such as the transplant team, and those who work in the intensive care unit, will weigh in on the matter.

But they’re confident they can reach a consensus.

“For a patient, I don’t think you could put a price tag on it, because it potentially can change someone’s life,” Taylor says.

If everything goes as planned, Canada’s first face transplant could be performed within one year.

So far, there have been 24 face transplants around the world. The first full face transplant was performed in France in 2005 on a woman who was mauled by her dog.

With files from The Associated Press

Follow Ross on Twitter: @rlordglobal