LONDON (Reuters)--New faces given to a Chinese man after a bear tore off part of his face and a FrenchCaribbean man disfigured by a rare tumor show that such transplants can work and are not medical oddities  ,researchers said. The findings give hope to some people with severe facial disfigurement and suggest the transplants could prove longlasting without major problems.Despite the tissue rejection in the first year after their transplants,neither men had psychological problems accepting their new faces and have been able to rejoin society,they reported. Only three people have received face transplants.The world's first was carried out on French woman Isabelle Dinoire in November 2005 after she was disfigured in an attack by her dog.In 2007,her doctors reported that she had recovered slowly and steadily,overcoming two periods of rejection. In 2006,Chinese doctors performed a face transplant on a 30yearold hit by a bear.While there were some complications with tissue rejection following the operation,two years later the man was doing well,his doctors said."This case suggests that facial transplantation might be an option for _ a severely disfigured face,and could enable patients to bring themselves back into society," Shuzhong Guo and colleagues at Xijing Hospital in China wrote. A French team described their work on a 29yearold man who suffered from Von Recklinghausen disease,an illness that changes the shape of his face."The man,who was not named,was given a new nose,mouth and chin in a 2007 operation.He began to work 13 months after the transplant has more function in his face and has not rejected the new tissue," his doctors said. "Our case confirms that face transplantation is practical and effective for the correction of specific disfigurement," Dr.Laurent Lantieri and colleagues at the HenriMondor hospital outside Paris wrote. What problem resulted from the facial operations?
The patients wouldn't accept the facial change. It was hard for the patients to get along with others. It took some time for the patients to recover from the operation. The patients usually suffered from tissue rejection.