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Man Gets Face Transplant That Took 56 Hours, Says Results ‘Far Exceeded’ His Expectations

Discussion in 'Plastic Surgery' started by Hadeel Abdelkariem, Jul 25, 2018.

  1. Hadeel Abdelkariem

    Hadeel Abdelkariem Golden Member

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    Ten years after a suicide attempt which saw a bullet wound cause considerable damage to his face, Andy Sandness has undergone one of the rarest operations in the world; a face transplant.

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    Sandness was 21 years old when serious depression became unbearable and attempted to take his own life with a rifle shot to his head. He was unsuccessful but did significant damage to his face in the process.

    It seems that Sandness felt straight away he had made a "terrible mistake", says the Daily Mail, "When the police arrived, an officer, who was also a friend, cradled him in his arms as Sandness begged 'Please, please don't let me die! I don't want to die'".

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    Following the event, he had extensive surgery, including operations to remove dead tissue and shattered bones, as well as a jaw reconstruction using bone from his own hip.

    After numerous operations over a four and a half month period, Andy Sandness returned to his home in Newcastle, Wyoming, but told people he had been in a hunting accident in explaining his appearance; "I felt like they didn't need to know" he says.

    Whilst able to live at home, life was far from easy from Sandness, who, his father says, "was insecure. Who wouldn't be?"

    "You never fully accept it" says Sandness, "You eventually say, okay, is there something else we can do."

    Over the five years that followed, Andy Sandness made an annual visit to the Mayo clinic where he had been treated, to see Dr Samir Mardani, but was reluctant to go through with a formidable list of further operations that were laid out to him; he didn't want more surgical scars and skin grafts.

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    Then, in 2012, he received a phone call from Dr Mardani, who had become a close friend, that would change the course of his life; the doctor told him that the Mayo clinic was to launch a face transplant program.

    Just over three years later, Andy Sandness entered an operating theatre at the Mayo clinic, ready to endure one of the rarest operations in the world. Dr Mardani had thought it might take several years to find a suitable donor for his patient; certain criteria needed to be fulfilled, including blood and tissue type matches, the donor would need to be within ten years of Sandness in age and roughly the same size as the patient.

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    As it happened, though, within five months of Andy Sandness being added to the waiting list of the United Network for Organ Sharing, following an extensive psychiatric evaluation which aimed to ascertain whether he would be a suitable subject for the operation, a match was found.

    Calen Ross was also 21 when he, similarly to Sandness, turned a gun on himself, but did not survive the shot, and passed away in June 2016.

    His widow, Lily, was resolved to carry out her husband's wish to be an organ donor, although wasn't initially comfortable with the notion of another man taking Mr Ross' face.

    "I didn't want to walk around and all of a sudden see Calen," she explained, according to the BBC, but after being assured that Sandness would not be identifiable as her husband, as he still had his own eyes and forehead, she consented to the surgery.

    Meanwhile, Dr Mardani and his team had spent 50 Saturdays over a three and a half year period rehearsing the operation, using cadaver heads to practise face transplants. The highly complex process involved "identifying nerve branches on the faces of both men and using electric currents to determine their function - smiling, or opening and closing the eyes," says the BBC.

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    For three weeks following the operation, which took 56 hours, Andy Sandness was not allowed to see his new face, the mirror in his room was taken away. Finally, Sandness was handed a mirror and confronted with his new face. Unable to talk, he wrote "Far exceeded my expectations.", handing it to Dr Mardani.

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    "You don't know how happy that makes us feel," was the Doctor's emotional response.

    Andy Sandness now plans to return home to Wyoming, and begin his life all over again.

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