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FEATURE: Rebecca Coombes Face of the future BMJ 2008; 336: 18-19 [Full text]

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Psychological assessment of candidates for face transplantation

Guo-you Zhang   (14 February 2008)

Psychological assessment of candidates for face transplantation 14 February 2008
Guo-you Zhang, Department of Burn and Plastic Surgery, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University Shuangyong Road, Nanning,530021 Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China Send response to journal: Re: Psychological assessment of candidates for face transplantation	In his article about "Face of the future", Rebecca Coombes 1 talks to plastic surgeon Peter Butler about his battle to perform the first full face transplant, media intrusion, and professional resistance to his work. As mentioned in this article, Peter Butler discuss the motivation, obstacle and next steps about full face transplant and think the burden of publicity is a key issue about it, but I think psychological assessment of candidates is also an important issue that we must face as plastic surgeon ourselves. A face transplant is not only a new and different surgical "experiment", it is an undertaking that involves considerable risk to psychological well-being.2 As a first public reported partial face transplantation (a second partial face transplantation reported from China but only the media report is so far available: www.ap.org, accessed 18 Jan 2007), it's necessary that prospective teams should arrange an expert assessment of the psychological competence of potential recipients to evaluate the relevant risk/benefit information, which could be help further refine the assessment of candidates for this procedure and possibly other forms of composite tissue allotransplantation.3-4 A profile of psychological benefits and risks should be formulated for each candidate, and any recommended interventions to optimize candidacy and minimize psychiatric morbidity should be outlined. 1. Rebecca Coombes. Face of the future. BMJ 2008;336:18-19. 2. Levine E, Degutis L, Pruzinsky T, Shin J, Persing JA. Quality of life and facial trauma: Psychological and body image effects. Ann Plast Surg 2005;54:502-10. 3. Clarke A, Butler PEM. Face transplantation: Psychological assessment and preparation for surgery. Psychol Health Med 2004;9:315-26. 4. Furr LA, Wiggins O, Cunningham M, Vasilic D, Brown CS, Banis JC Jr, et al. Psychosocial implications of disfigurement and the future of human face transplantation. Plast Reconstr Surg 2007;120:559-65. Competing interests: None declared