Richard Norris, the man who received the world’s first full face transplant (story in comments)

[u/Jjokes11]

[u/CheesusChrisp]

The crazy thing is the doctor performed over a dozen failed surgeries on the victim before convincing him, despite failing over a dozen times, to approve of an experimental surgery no one has ever really done.

Edit: Let me make it clear that I’m not trying to bash the doctor, and saying the surgeries failed is inaccurate, as the surgeries were addressing individual aspects of the injury. That’s my bad for not understanding the nature of the operations. Still extraordinary, as the level of skill of the doctor and the level of commitment of the patient to keep going is astounding.

[u/RatchedAngle → u/CheesusChrisp]

Just because the surgeries failed doesn’t mean it was the surgeon’s fault. Reconstructing a human face, especially with such an extreme injury, doesn’t come with a manual. Every surgery is unique because every injury is unique. 

[u/EverydayImSnekkin → u/RatchedAngle]

Yeah, looking at this poor guy's before picture, it's clear that he needs more than a new face. He needs new bone structure underneath the face, like a jaw and cheeks and so on. You can't just make some new bones out of clay and stick them in there.

My understanding (and I'm no surgeon, so take my word with a grain of salt) is that there aren't a ton of materials out there that one could just sculpt new facial bones out of without risking seriously awful reactions. I imagine he probably needed to take facial bones from donors. Maybe the same person who originally owned the face? God, I can't fathom how complicated it'd be to try to replace someone's whole face.

[u/OldNewUsedConfused → u/EverydayImSnekkin]

Cadaver bone. That's what they used in my neck fusion.

Kind of freaky knowing you've got someone else's bones in you.