Dallas Wiens | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 6, 1985 |
| Known for | First full face transplant in the U.S. |
| Children | 1 |
Dallas Wiens (born May 6, 1985) is the recipient of the United States first full face transplant operation, performed at the Brigham and Women's Hospital during the week of March 14, 2011. [1] It was the first such operation in United States and the third [2] in the world. [3]
Wiens was burned by a high voltage wire on November 13, 2008, when he was painting Ridglea Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. [4] He was standing inside a boom lift when his forehead made contact with a high-voltage wire. [5] [6] Transported by helicopter to Parkland Memorial Hospital, surgeons performed more than a dozen debridement procedures over approximately two months to remove the burned skin. As part of this process, they enucleated his left eye, and set his right eye back in its socket before covering it with a skin flap to protect it from further damage. Later, surgeons spent 36 hours over two days working to reconstruct Wiens's face using muscle from his back. This left him with half of his scalp, a small portion of flesh on the left side of his chin, and without eyebrows, eyelids, a nose or lips, though he had a horizontal opening for his mouth.
Wiens was left permanently blind and without lips, a nose or eyebrows. [7] Doctors told the family that Wiens would likely be paralyzed from the neck down and would never speak or produce enough saliva to eat solid food. They put him in a medically induced coma for three months. After awakening, and becoming frustrated with attempts to teach him how to communicate using a computer, Wiens started learning how to speak, despite having been told that it was not possible. Having made unprecedented progress, he was given a speaking tracheotomy to help him speak more easily. Soon after, he was able to hold himself up with his legs, and so was provided with physical therapy in order to further strengthen his legs. Though acting against medical advice, Wiens demonstrated that he was capable of eating solid food in March 2009. He left the hospital in May 2009, using a wheelchair for the majority of the time. However, he was walking without the wheelchair by Christmas 2009.
In March 2011, a transplant team of more than 30 doctors and nurses, alongside 8 surgeons from across multiple disciplines, led by Bohdan Pomahač, performed a full face transplant at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. It took 15 hours. Wiens' sight could not be recovered in this surgery, so he was fitted with an acrylic ocular prosthesis, which sits over the skin currently protecting his right eye. He has been able to talk on the phone and has regained his sense of smell. [8] The operation was paid for with the help of the US Department of Defense, which hopes to gain knowledge from the procedure to help soldiers suffering from facial injuries. [7] [9]
Wiens has undergone more than fifty surgeries since his injury in 2008. [10] He will need more surgery in the future.
On May 9, 2011, Wiens made his first public appearance after the surgery, wearing dark sunglasses. He said that his young daughter told him "Daddy, you're so handsome" when she saw him after the operation. [1] He also said of his new face, "It feels as if it has become my own." [3]
On January 20, 2013, Wiens married fellow Parkland Hospital burn patient Jamie Nash of Crandall, Texas, whom he met at a burn survivors support group. Wiens and Nash separated in 2018 and were divorced in early 2021.
Wiens is currently in a relationship with Annalyn Bell who, like him, is blind.
He has a daughter from a previous relationship, who was born prior to his injury.
Christiaan Neethling Barnard was a South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant operation. On 3 December 1967, Barnard transplanted the heart of accident victim Denise Darvall into the chest of 54-year-old Louis Washkansky who regained full consciousness and was able to talk easily with his wife, before dying eighteen days later of pneumonia, largely brought on by the anti-rejection drugs that suppressed his immune system. Barnard had told Mr. and Mrs. Washkansky that the operation had an 80% chance of success, an assessment which has been criticised as misleading. Barnard's second transplant patient, Philip Blaiberg, whose operation was performed at the beginning of 1968, returned home from the hospital and lived for a year and a half.
Plastic surgery is a surgical specialty involving the restoration, reconstruction, or alteration of the human body. It can be divided into two main categories: reconstructive surgery and cosmetic surgery. Reconstructive surgery includes craniofacial surgery, hand surgery, microsurgery, and the treatment of burns. While reconstructive surgery aims to reconstruct a part of the body or improve its functioning, cosmetic surgery aims to improve the appearance of it. A comprehensive definition of plastic surgery has never been established, because it has no distinct anatomical object and thus overlaps with practically all other surgical specialties. An essential feature of plastic surgery is that it involves the treatment of conditions that require or may require tissue relocation skills.
Skin grafting, a type of graft surgery, involves the transplantation of skin. The transplanted tissue is called a skin graft.
Hand transplantation, or simply a hand transplant, is a surgical procedure to transplant a hand from one human to another. The donor hand, usually from a brain-dead donor, is transplanted to a recipient amputee. Most hand transplants to date have been performed on below-elbow amputees, although above-elbow transplants are gaining popularity. Hand transplants were the first of a new category of transplants where multiple organs are transplanted as a single functional unit, now termed vascularized composite allotransplantation (VCA).
Joseph Edward Murray was an American plastic surgeon who performed the first successful human kidney transplant on identical twins Richard and Ronald Herrick on December 23, 1954.
A face transplant is a medical procedure to replace all or part of a person's face using tissue from a donor. Part of a field called "Vascularized Composite Tissue Allotransplantation" (VCA) it involves the transplantation of facial skin, the nasal structure, the nose, the lips, the muscles of facial movement used for expression, the nerves that provide sensation, and, potentially, the bones that support the face. The recipient of a face transplant will take life-long medications to suppress the immune system and fight off rejection.
Malcolm Oliver Perry II was an American physician and surgeon. He was one of the doctors who attended to President John F. Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963 after Kennedy was shot. Two days later, he attended to Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald after he was shot.
Peter Edward Michael Butler, FRCSI, FRCS, FRCS (Plast) is Professor of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at University College London. He is consultant plastic surgeon and head of the face transplantation team at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust in London, United Kingdom. He is Director of the Charles Wolfson Center for Reconstructive Surgery at the Royal Free Hospital, which was launched in November by The Right Honourable George Osborne, MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer at No 11 Downing Street in November 2013.
James Henry "Red" Duke, Jr. was a trauma surgeon and professor at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, where he worked on-site since 1972. He was instrumental in introducing Memorial Hermann's Life Flight program and bringing a level I trauma center to Houston.
George Thomas Shires was an American trauma surgeon. He is known for his research on shock, which initiated the current practice of giving saline to trauma and surgical patients. He operated on John Connally and Lee Harvey Oswald after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Isabelle Dinoire 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.
Connie Culp was the first United States recipient of a partial face transplant, performed at the Cleveland Clinic in December 2008.
James D. Hardy was a United States surgeon who performed the world's first lung transplant into John Russell, who lived 18 days. The transplant was performed at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi on June 11, 1963.
Norman Edward Shumway was a pioneer of heart surgery at Stanford University. He was the 67th president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery and the first to perform an adult human to human heart transplantation in the United States.
Bohdan Pomahač is a Czech plastic surgeon. He led the team that performed the first full face transplant in United States and the third overall in the world.
Dr Asim Shahmalak is a British hair transplant surgeon, broadcaster, and proponent of such surgery. He performed the UK's first eyelash transplant in 2009, and has treated a number of British celebrity patients.
Christopher Daniel Duntsch is a former American neurosurgeon who has been nicknamed Dr. D. and Dr. Death for 33 incidents of gross neurosurgical malpractice while working at hospitals in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, which maimed 31 patients and caused 2 deaths. He was accused of injuring 33 out of 38 patients in less than two years – a track record so unlikely that hospital administrators and district attorneys simply felt that it was too unbelievable to be true, allowing Duntsch to continue to practice before his license was revoked by the Texas Medical Board, and to avoid prosecution for years. In 2017, Duntsch was convicted of maiming one of his patients and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Earl Ronald Owen AO (1934–2014) was an Australian microsurgeon and classical music specialist who led or assisted in many pioneering achievements in the field of microsurgery, including many "world firsts", such as the world's first finger reattachment, vasectomy reversal, fallopian tubal ligation, hand transplant, double-hand transplant and face transplant.
Daniel Evan Borsuk is a Canadian plastic surgeon in Montreal, Quebec, who is a pioneer in facial reconstruction. The first Canadian face transplant was performed under his leadership. He is also an advocate for pet safety and education, a supporter of universal health care, an Officer of National Order of Québec, and the recipient of the Governor General of Canada Meritorious Service Cross.
Eduardo De Jesus Rodriguez MD, DDS is a Cuban American plastic and reconstructive surgeon, and reconstructive transplant surgeon, who is known for his contribution to the field of facial transplantation and vascularized composite allotransplantation.
