The alternative to a face transplant is to move the patient's own skin from their back, buttocks or thighs to their face in a series of as many as 50 operations to regain even limited function and a face that is often likened to a mask or a living quilt.

Dr. L. Scott Levin, chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Duke University Medical Center, has described the procedure as \"the single most important area of reconstructive research.\"

History

Self as donor (face replant)

The world's first full-face replant operation was on nine year-old Sandeep Kaur, whose face was ripped off when her hair was caught in a thresher. Sandeep's mother witnessed the accident. Sandeep arrived at the hospital unconscious with her face in two pieces in a plastic bag.

An article in the The Guardian recounts: \"In 1994, a nine-year-old child in northern India lost her face and scalp in a threshing machine accident. Her parents raced to the hospital with her face in a plastic bag and a surgeon managed to reconnect the arteries and replant the skin.\" The operation was successful, although the child was left with some muscle damage as well as scarring around the perimeter where the facial skin was sutured back on. Sandeep's doctor was Abraham Thomas, one of India's top microsurgeons. In 2004, Sandeep was training to be a nurse.

In 1997, a similar operation was performed in the Australian state of Victoria, when a woman's face and scalp, torn off in a similar accident, was packed in ice and successfully reattached.

Mouth and nose from another

The world's first partial face transplant on a living human was carried out on November 27, 2005 by Professor Bernard Devauchelle a maxillofacial surgeon in Amiens, France. Isabelle Dinoire underwent surgery to replace her original face that had been ravaged by her dog. A triangle of face tissue from a brain-dead human's nose and mouth was grafted onto the patient