Toronto specialists set sights on face, limb transplants
August 18, 2011
Vit Wagner
STAFF REPORTER
Specialists at Toronto’s University Health Network and the Hospital for Sick Children aim to perform their first face and limb transplants within a year to 18 months, if they get the green light from hospital administrators and the provincial health ministry.
“We are being cautious and careful,” Dr. Gary Levy, medical director of the UHN Multi Organ Transplant Program, said Thursday. “We want to make sure that all the pieces are in place before we start. But institutions in Toronto have been very proactive and the ministry has also been very supportive.”
Initially, Levy said, the hospitals propose to do as many as five face transplants annually at a cost of roughly $400,000 each, and 25 upper limb transplants, at a cost of $250,000 per operation.
The experimental surgeries are considered risky. After the operations, patients are required to take immunosuppressive drugs to ward off rejection, with potentially severe and even life-threatening side effects sometimes requiring further surgery.
Only 17 face transplants have been performed worldwide, beginning in 2005 when doctors in France performed a partial face transplant on Isabelle Dinoire, who had been mauled by a Labrador retriever. Similar surgeries have been performed in the U.S., China and Spain, where limb transplants, mainly on hands, have also been done.
Featured Sponsored Listings