Published 7 July 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a693
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a693

Obituaries

Paul Louis Tessier

Plastic surgeon who revolutionised the treatment of facial deformity

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Paul Tessier was one of plastic surgery’s greatest innovators. His original description of techniques for craniofacial reconstruction had a huge impact on plastic and maxillofacial surgery, creating the new subspecialty of craniofacial surgery and giving hope to many with severe facial deformities that were previously untreatable. He had an insatiable will to progress even into his eighth and ninth decades. Never content that a patient should look "better than they did before we started," he declared "if it is not normal, it is not enough."

Paul was born in August 1917 at Heric, near Nantes. His parents were wine merchants, but his great-grandfather was a blacksmith, and perhaps it was here that the seeds of a skill for moulding hard tissues were sown. His initial ambition was to join the navy as an engineer, but this was thwarted by a combination of illness and injury. He considered forestry but finally . . . [Full text of this article]

Barry M Jones
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