Third face transplant completed

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

20-year-old patient Hatice Nergiz (R) lost a large amount of tissue in her nose, upper chin, palate and upper lip after she was shot five years ago, reports said. AA photo

A team of Turkish doctors in Ankara conducted Turkey’s third face transplant operation on March 17, partially giving the face of a 28-year-old woman to a 20-year-old patient.

Gazi University Faculty of Medicine performed the operation on Hatice Nergiz, who was reported to have lost a large amount of tissue in her nose, upper chin, palate and upper lip after she was shot five years ago.

Nergiz has undergone 35 surgeries since losing part of her face in the gun accident in 2007.

Intensive care

Ankara’s Gazi University Faculty of Medicine and Gazi Hospital’s chief doctor, Professor Dr. Sacit Turanlı, said the surgery was successful and that Nergiz was now undergoing treatment in the intensive care unit.

 “We are very proud of the point that Turkish medicine has reached with the transplant operations,” Turanlı said, adding that the team of doctors who conducted the operation would soon issue a press announcement about the operation.

The donor was a 28-year-old woman of Moldovan origin who lost her life in Istanbul on March 16, Turanlı said.

The operation is the third face transplant operation to have been performed in Turkey since the start of the year.

Uğur Acar received Turkey’s first face-transplant operation in the southern province of Antalya on Jan. 21. Acar, who was given the face of 39-year-old Ahmet Kaya after the latter died Jan. 20, saw his new face in the mirror for the first time last week after being shaved by doctors.

The patient has recently begun moving his face muscles, according to reports.

The second face transplant took place last month when doctors at Ankara’s Hacettepe University gave 25-year-old Cengiz Gür a new face. Some 70 percent of Gür’s face was damaged at the age of 5 when he was injured by flying debris from a television that exploded.

Meanwhile, the condition of Atilla Kavdır, a two-limb transplant patient who was operated on together with Acar, is also reported to be improving.

One of his doctors, Ömer Özkan, said Kavdır could now move his fingers.