Lyon: One of the pioneering surgeons who performed the world’s first transplants of the hand and face has died in his 80s, a friend told reporters on Sunday.
Jean-Michel Dubernard, who became one of southeastern Lyon’s most famous doctors while working there, collapsed at Istanbul’s airport while traveling with his family on Saturday night, a friend said, declining to be identified.
Dubernard performed the world’s first-hand transplant on a man from New Zealand in September 1998, a feat that brought him international recognition. In a 13-hour operation, Dubernard and his colleagues joined the patient’s arteries, veins, nerves, tendons, muscles and skin after pinning together the two bones of the forearm.
Two years later, he performed the first double hand and forearm transplant on a Frenchman who had been holding a rocket when it exploded.
In November 2005, Dubernard made history with the first partial face transplant, when he grafted on the nose, lips and chin from a brain-dead donor onto French divorcee Isabelle Dinoire, who had been mauled by her dog.
Dinoire gave a news conference three months later in full view of the international media, wearing thick makeup to camouflage the scars but with an otherwise restored face.
‘We want to bring these new techniques to the world to give hope to other people,’ Dubernard, then 64, said.
A Spanish team performed the first full-face transplant in March 2010.
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Complications
Rugby fan and father of three, Dubernard was an expert at his profession, known for his great work ethic.
When he was a child, he suffered from appendicitis and became interested in organ transplants after learning of the first successful kidney transplant in the United States in 1954.
In 2005, he told the Le Monde newspaper that his only motivation is to advance our understanding of medicine. Additionally, he has published widely in medical journals about his expertise, as well as the challenges transplant recipients face, both physically and psychologically.
In a 2006 article for European Urology, he wrote, ‘Psychological consequences of hand and face allografts (transplants) demonstrate that it is not so easy to use a dead person’s hands or to see their faces permanently after their death.’ His high profile and methods also meant that his work and patients were subjected to intense scrutiny and criticism.
The National Order of Doctors condemned the release of photographs of Dinoire following her face transplant and charged that the medical team led by Dubernard and Bernard Devauchelle was seeking attention.
In a statement, the order said, ‘Premature and uncontrolled communication distorted the respect due the patient and donor — as well as the generosity of their families.’
‘A dream’
His first-hand transplant also received unwelcome publicity when it emerged that the recipient, Clint Hallam, failed to take the powerful immunosuppressants required to prevent the new hand from rejecting.
As a result of an accident with a saw in prison, Hallam begged to have his new hand amputated in 2000, saying he felt ‘mentally detached’ from it, but Dubernard refused on the grounds that it was still functional.
Doctors were furious with the convicted fraudster for wasting their chance, but he was able to have his hand removed in London in 2001.
In 2016, Dinoire died 11 years after her face transplant. She suffered from various illnesses, mood swings and cancer attacks caused by the powerful drugs she had to take every day to prevent the transplant from being rejected by the body.
Dinoire’s body started rejecting the transplant a year before her death, and she lost part of her ability to speak.
Despite Dubernard’s absence, his legacy lives on in Lyon, where young surgeons continue to push forward science.
In January of this year, an Icelandic man received the world’s first double shoulder and arm transplant in the city, 20 years after he lost both limbs in an accident. The operation was ‘his biggest dream’, his wife said at a news conference.
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