Dr. Juan Pérez Barrett

She offered to donate her face.

This gave us a unique opportunity, which is having enough time in order to prepare the surgery.

She commented that she wanted to donate all her organs and tissues.

And then the transplant coordinators had an interview with her.

She also offered to donate her face if there was anyone that really needed that in order to get a face transplantation.

And I think it's a maximum expression of love and generosity.

And she was smiling during all that process.

So I think the intensity of all feelings and emotions and everything during that time was very, very high.

This also gave us a unique opportunity that no one else had carried out before in the world, which is having enough time in order to prepare the surgery, making plans with my medical engineers on how to cut the bone to be a perfect match.

Also, we had time to go to the anatomy department to make all the rehearsals of every tricky steps of the surgery and also prepare all the teams that had to be involved in that because with euthanasia, it's probably the most complex type of multi-organ donation

that exists.

She's doing quite well.

She has to cope now with some difficulties like any other transplant patient.

But now she's in the rehabilitation phase.

Now she has recovered sensation in all her transplant area.

So all the transplanted tissues that went to her face now have full sensation.

And now she's regaining movement in all the fascial muscles.

My impression is that we are going to advance a lot in terms of regenerative medicine and biology, also in terms of bioengineering.

In years to come, probably this will be just history.