World’s Most Expensive Face Transplant

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U.S. Face transplant woman: 'Don't judge people on their looks... You never know what might happen'




A mother who had a face transplant after being horribly disfigured when her husband blasted her with a shotgun has stepped in front of the cameras for the first time.

Connie Culp, 46, showed off the results of the world's most expensive face transplant - and America's first - at a news conference last night.

'I guess I'm the one you came to see today,' the mother-of-two from Ohio said at the Cleveland Clinic where she had the groundbreaking operation.



Connie Culp is helped to the podium by her surgeon, Dr Maria Siemionow

'But I think it's more important that you focus on the donor family that made it so I could have this person's face.'

Up until Tuesday, Culp's identity as the first face transplant recipient in the U.S. And how she came to be disfigured had been a secret.

Her husband Thomas shot her in the face in 2004 and then turned the gun on himself - although he survived and went to prison for seven years.

His wife was left clinging to life. 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 and she needed a tube into her windpipe to breathe.

Only her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip and chin were left.



Transformation: Connie Culp, after an injury to her face, left, and then as she appears today

A plastic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr Risal Djohan, examined her injuries two months later.

'He told me he didn't think, he wasn't sure, if he could fix me, but he'd try,' Culp recalled.

She endured 30 operations to try to fix her face. Doctors took parts of her ribs to make cheekbones and fashioned an upper jaw from one of her leg bones.

She had countless skin grafts from her thighs. Still, she was left unable to eat solid food, breathe on her own, or smell.



So grateful: Connie Culp speaks to reporters last night and the mother-of-two before she was injured

Then last December, Dr Maria Siemionow led a team of doctors in a 22-hour operation to replace 80 per cent of Culp's face with bone, muscles, nerves, skin and blood vessels from another woman who had just died.

It was the fourth face transplant in the world, though the others were not as extensive.

The first was performed in France in 2005 on Isabelle Dinoire, a woman who had been mauled by her dog.

A green light has been given for Britain's first transplant operation. A team led by surgeon Peter Butler will carry out the procedure at London's Royal Free hospital when a subject is chosen.

Miss Culp laughed as she said yesterday: 'Here I am, five years later. He did what he said - I got me my nose.'

In January, she was able to eat pizza, chicken and hamburgers for the first time in years.

She loves to have cookies with a cup of coffee, Dr Siemionow said.

No information has been released about the donor or how she died, but her family members were moved when they saw before-and-after pictures of Mis Culp, the medic added.



Thomas Culp with his wife Connie pictured at a fancy dress party

The mother-of-two now says she wants to help foster acceptance of those who have suffered burns and other disfiguring injuries.

'When somebody has a disfigurement and don't look as pretty as you do, don't judge them, because you never know what happened to them,' she said.

'Don't judge people who don't look the same as you do. Because you never know. One day it might be all taken away.'

It's a role she has already practiced, clinic psychiatrist Dr Kathy Coffman revealed.

'Once while shopping, she heard a little kid say "You said there were no real monsters, mommy, and there's one right there",' Dr Coffman said.

'Connie stopped and said "I'm not a monster. I'm a person who was shot" and pulled out her driver's license to show the child what she used to look like.'




Groundbreaking: Surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic work on Ms Culp


Ms Culp, who is from the small town of Unionport, near the Pennsylvania line, told her doctors she just wants to blend back into society.

She has a son and a daughter who live near her, and two pre-school grandsons.

Before she was shot, she and her husband ran a painting and contracting business, and she did everything from hanging drywall to a little plumbing, Dr Coffman said.

Miss Culp left the hospital on February 5 and has returned for periodic follow-up care.

She has suffered only one mild rejection episode that was controlled with a single dose of steroid medicines, her doctors said.

She must take immune-suppressing drugs for the rest of her life, but her dosage has been greatly reduced and she needs only a few pills a day.




A CT scan photo from the Cleveland Clinic, of Connie before and after the transplant

The clinic expects to absorb the cost of the transplant because it was experimental, doctors said.

Dr Siemionow estimated it at $250,000 to $300,000.

That is less than the $1million that other surgeons estimate it costs them to treat other severely disfigured people through dozens of separate operations, she said.

Also at the Cleveland Clinic is Charla Nash of Stamford, Connecticut, who was attacked by a friend's chimpanzee in February.

She lost her hands, nose, lips and eyelids, and will be blind, doctors said. Clinic officials said it is premature to discuss the possibility of a face transplant for her.

In April, doctors at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston performed the nation's second face transplant, on a man disfigured in a freak accident. It was the world's seventh such operation.



Dr Maria Siemionow explains the face transplant surgery she and her team performed in December