Isabelle Dinoire

Isabelle Dinoire (1967 – 22 April 2016) was a French woman who was the first person to undergo a partial face transplant, after her Labrador retriever cross breed mauled her in May 2005. She underwent a 15-hour operation in November 2005 in which surgeons transplanted the nose, lips and chin from a brain-dead donor at a hospital in Amiens. She died at age 49 in April 2016, though her death was not announced until more than four months later.

Dinoire died of cancer at a French hospital in April 2016. Her death was not announced until September 2016 to give her family privacy, according to hospital officials. According to newspaper Le Figaro, Dinoire’s body had rejected the transplant in 2015 “and she had lost part of the use of her lips.” The daily immunosuppressive drugs she was required to take left her vulnerable to cancer. Two cancers had developed, the paper said.

There was a change in her appearance, as her original face had a wide, tilted nose, a prominent chin and thin lips, but the donated face gave her a straight and narrow nose, a smaller chin and a fuller mouth. In 2008, Dinoire admitted in an interview that she sometimes struggled to accept the appearance of her transplanted face, as she had expected it to look more like her own, saying: “It takes an awful lot of time to get used to someone else’s face.” In the same interview, she reported that full sensitivity had returned to her face.

Doctors and the media debated whether the donor and/or the recipient had attempted suicide, with reports stating that the donor had hanged herself. The family of the donor told the funeral director who handled the donor’s death that it had been accidental. Local French newspapers stated that Dinoire’s daughter said that her mother had attempted suicide. Dubernard said that the recipient had not tried to kill herself. Olivier Jardé, an orthopedic surgeon from Amiens and a member of the French National Assembly, said that both the donor and the recipient had attempted suicide. The Sunday Times, a British newspaper, stated that Dinoire had said in a telephone interview that she had tried to commit suicide. In her 2007 memoir, Dinoire stated that the donor had killed herself, and this “gave Dinoire a feeling of sisterhood” with her.

In a statement made on 6 February 2006, Dinoire said that “after a very upsetting week, with many personal problems, I took some pills to forget … I fainted and fell on the ground, hitting a piece of furniture.”

In 2009, Dinoire’s doctors reported she was recovering well. Exactly one year following the partial face transplant, Dinoire stated she had the ability to smile again. On 28 November 2006, Dinoire’s surgeon, Bernard Devauchelle, said that over the past year Dinoire’s scars had become far less prominent.

The Associated Press released a picture of Dinoire on 28 November 2006, one year after the operation. The French newspaper Le Monde’ s website explained on 2 December 2006 that the Associated Press had eliminated the picture, because “The hair of Isabelle Dinoire and the background of this image were manipulated by the source.”

The first partial face transplant surgery on a living human was performed on Dinoire on 27 November 2005 by Professor Bernard Devauchelle, assisted by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard at the Centre hospitalier Universitaire Nord in Amiens, France. A triangle of face tissue, including the nose and mouth, was taken from a brain-dead female donor and grafted onto the patient. Scientists elsewhere had performed scalp and ear transplants, but the claim was the first for the transplant of a mouth and nose, the most difficult parts of the face to transplant. Dinoire was also given bone marrow cells to prevent rejection of the tissue. According to The Times, she had signed a contract with British documentary maker Michael Hughes before the operation.