Main description:

This book brings together all the relevant available science behind face transplants. It is comprehensive in its coverage, encompassing patient and donor evaluation, ethics, legal issues, psychological issues, types of transplant, surgical technique, issues relating to immunosuppression, follow-up protocols, and current outcomes. Facial transplantation, which allows the replacement of missing anatomy with a perfect match based on transplant medicine principles, has become the most striking innovation in plastic surgery of the twenty-first century as surgeons and scientists progress from reconstructive surgery to restorative surgery. A robust team approach is, however, necessary to produce safe and efficient outcomes, and numerous questions are arising, from technical issues to ethical dilemmas. The reader will discover in this volume all the information required in order to understand this new discipline and to be able to set up a program of facial transplantation.

Contents:

Introduction and Background.- History of the Face Transplantation.- Composite Tissue Allotransplantation (CTA).- Indications of Facial Transplantation.- Evaluation of the Candidate for Facial Transplantation.- Evaluation of Donors.- Legal, Ethical and Psychological Issues in Facial Transplantation.- Face as an Organ: Functional Anatomy.- Types of Face Transplants.- Requirements for a Multidisciplinary Team.- Surgical Technique of Facial Transplantation.- Immunological Issues and Immunomodulation.- An Overview of the World`s Global Experience.