Update on recipient of first face transplant

Australia's Sunday Times visits Isabelle Dinoire, the 38-year-old French woman who received the world's first face transplant two months ago. (Previous post here.) From the article:

Miss Dinoire remains reluctant to visit shopping centres and other busy places. But under the close supervision of a team of psychiatrists, she is gaining the confidence to return to society...

She says she is in a positive mood – though she is chain-smoking again – and is making plans to study computers and accounting at college, with a view to opening a baby-clothes shop...

Another of her surgeons, Bernard Devauchelle, said: "Her facial expressiveness is slowly returning and she is talking quite clearly, but has some problems with the letters P and B, which require the lips.

"She certainly does not look like the living dead. She's eating and drinking without dribbling.

"Psychologically, she has totally accepted her new face. Her return to smoking is not the best thing. But that's what she wants to do – we can't stop her."

There is still a risk that Miss Dinoire's body will reject the new face and for the rest of her life she will have to take preventative drugs, which cause an increased risk of cancer and kidney disease.

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