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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 The December face transplant was the largest of 30 operations she'd had to repair the damage, the AP reported. For example, doctors had used portions of her ribs to make new cheekbones and had created an upper jaw from one of her leg bones. Culp also received numerous skin grafts from her thighs.
But the face transplant was the greatest step toward a new face. During the operation, surgeons replaced 80 percent of Culp's face with muscles, nerves, skin and blood vessels from the unnamed donor.
"There was really an entire mid-face missing, and there was no way to reconstruct with conventional means," Siemionow said during an interview Wednesday on NBC's Today show.
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Culp left the Cleveland Clinic hospital Feb. 5 and returns periodically for follow-up care. She has had only one tissue-rejection episode, described as mild and under control with a single dose of steroid medications. She must take immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of her life to ward off rejection, however.
Recounting how she heard a child call her a "monster" before her surgery, Culp said she hopes her experience will foster better acceptance of people disfigured by injury.
"When somebody has a disfigurement and don't look as pretty as you do, don't judge them because you never know what happened to them," she said. "Don't judge people who don't look the same as you do. Because you never know. One day it might be all taken away."
Culp's surgery was not the only transplant procedure to make headlines this week. On Monday, 57-year-old Jeff Kepner, of Augusta, Ga., underwent nearly nine hours of surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to replace both his hands -- the first double hand transplant performed in the United States.
According to the AP, the surgery on Kepner, who lost both his hands and feet a decade ago, involved a new technique, developed at the medical center, called the Pittsburgh Protocol. The strategy reduces the amount of toxic immunosuppressive drugs typically needed for major transplant operations.
So far, eight double hand transplants have been performed abroad. The first single hand transplant in the United States was done in 1999 on a New Jersey man who lost his hand in a firecracker accident.
More information
The National Foundation for Transplants has more on transplants.
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-- E.J. Mundell
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