Turkey's 5th face transplant patient out of intensive care

ANTALYA

27-year-old Recep Sert, the fifth patient to undergo a face transplant surgery in Turkey and also the country's first patient to have a chin transplant, was tranferred to the service after the completion of 11 day-treatment in the intensive care unit.

Holding a press conference at the hospital, Prof. Dr. Omer Ozkan, academician and surgeon at Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Department at the Akdeniz University Hospital in Turkey's southern province of Antalya, gave information on the current medical condition of Sert who underwent an 8-hour successful surgery of face and chin transplant on July 18.

Reported to have a good performance status, Sert was being held in the intensive care unit for the last 11 days under induced sedation to allow him to recover.

Stressing that Sert remained in the intensive care unit for a longer period of time compared to other face transplant patients, Ozkan said the reason was the adaptation of the patient, the wounds in his mouth and a more complicated surgery he underwent.

Ozkan stated that Sert could communicate with them and easily see, saying "His relatives also saw him. We transferred him to the normal service as of 09:00 (local time). We successfully survived the most important process of 10 days in terms of surgery. There were no complications during the process. Now we have a 1-month period ahead of us, which is risky for drug complications."

Reminding that the patient used to breathe by his throat in his earlier life, Ozkan noted that they would like to overcome this problem, too.

"We plan to connect his previous tongue with the newly-transplanted chin. Our earlier intention was to do the operation 2 months later but we have decided to perform it at an earlier date. We want to enable the patient to normally breathe and easily eat and drink," he said.

Ozkan also underscored that Sert had more oedema compared to other face transplant surgeries.

"We will shave his beard and show his face within 15 days as the oedema weakens" he added.

Prof. Dr. Omer Ozkan of Akdeniz University Hospital and his team performed on July 18 a full face transplantation along with a chin transplantation on Sert who lost his left eye and chin in a shotgun accident.

During Turkey's 5th face transplant surgery in Antalya, the face and chin of the Polish tourist Andrej Kucza were successfully transplanted to the Turkish patient.

Sert, a chef living in Izmir, was severely wounded in the face when a shotgun he was cleaning fired in 2007. In the accident, he lost 12 of his teeth, his left eye and most of his chin and his nose was heavily scarred. Since then he has undergone multiple life-saving and reconstructive surgeries. He applied to Akdeniz University Hospital in 2012 for a face transplant.

- Turkey's Face Transplant History

Turkey's face transplant adventure began when the family of Ahmet Kaya who committed suicide on January 21, 2012 donated his face. The face removed from Kaya was transplanted to 19-year-old Ugur Acar whose face was almost completely seared by a burning blanket when he was only 40 days old. The successful operation, a first in Turkish plastic surgery history, put Prof. Dr. Omer Ozkan and his team in the spotlight of the international and Turkish media.

The second face transplant surgery of Turkey was performed at Ankara's Hacettepe University on Cengiz Gul while the third one occurred in Ankara on March 17, 2012 at Gazi University Faculty of Medicine with a partial face transplantation operation on 20-year-old Hatice Nergis.

Turkey's fourth face transplant surgery was performed again by Prof. Omer Ozkan at Akdeniz University Hospital in which the face of 19-year-old Tevfik Yilmaz was transplanted to 34-year-old Turan Colak.

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