Volunteer Firefighter Receives Face Transplant

Left without eyelids, lips, ears, a nose and hair, Hardison underwent dozens of surgeries to reconstruct his face, all with little success. Following the incident, Hardison had always worn a cap, sunglasses, and prosthetic ears to cover up his wounds in public, and quietly lived the emotional and physical trauma of the event. The ceiling collapsed, releasing enough fire to melt Hardison’s mask and hose, according to ABC News.

Watch a video about Hardison’s emotional journey above.

The surgery has given Hardison a new face, scalp, ears, ear canals, and selected portions of bone from the chin, cheeks, and nose, it said.

Dr Eduardo Rodriguez, who led the surgical team that performed the transplant at a NY hospital, said it is by far the most extensive performed successfully in terms of the amount of tissue transferred. This combination of photos from August 15, 2015, to November 11, 2015, provided by the hospital shows the recuperation of Hardison after his facial transplant surgery. He said that seeing his patient smile was “amazing for me personally because all these gambles that we take, there are predictable risks that we take, to finally see that activated… watching all these milestones be met, I start feeling better and better”.

I can only imagine how she felt after seeing the visage of her dead son brought back to the life in the form of this remarkable and ground-breaking surgery.

David Rodebaugh, 26, an Ohio-born Brooklyn artist and bicycling enthusiast died from injures suffered in an accident.

Mr Hardison in a statement thanked his donor’s family.

“They have done a lot for me. I hope they see in me the goodness of their decision”, Hardison said.

A firefighter whose face was burned off while trying to rescue someone has been given a new face.

Two operating teams worked in unison, one preparing the donor and the other the recipient. They also helped him through his recovery and rehabilitation after the procedure.

Dr.Rodriguez said at a press conference that in at least five previous cases of facial transplants, patients died after the new tissue was rejected. He will continue to have extensive rehabilitation therapy to improve his strength and speech. That’s a very important discovery and it was done in a manner where we preserve the blood vessels that go to the scalp. But now we’ve proven that the ability to transplant the face has advanced and likely gone, it’s advanced more than the science of immunosuppression.