French medics conduct world first full face transplant

French doctors are claiming to have carried out the world's first successful full-face transplant, a news report said Thursday.

The operation was conducted at the end of June on a 35-year-old man whose face had been deformed by a genetic disorder and constituted "a world first", the Le Parisien/Aujourd'hui newspaper said.

The patient "is doing well. He is walking, he is eating, he is talking", Laurent Lantieri, head of reconstructive surgery at the Creteil Henri-Mondor hospital in the Paris suburbs, who carried out the operation, told the newspaper.

A full-face transplant involves the removal of the entire face from a corpse, including mouth and eyelids, and grafting it onto the patient.

"We are the first to have done a full-face transplant including eyelids and tear ducts. I am proud because this has been done in France," Lantieri was quoted as saying.

In April, a Spanish medical team announced that it had conducted a full-face transplant in a Barcelona hospital on a young man whose face was badly injured in an accident.