Face transplant recipient's donor face has been failing, doctors say

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Doctors: Face transplant recipient's donor face has been failing

Carmen Blandin Tarleton is hoping for a second face transplant after her first one is starting to fail. Her first transplant was put on in 2013 after a domestic violence incident.

A woman who was severely burned in a domestic violence attack recently discovered that tissue damage uncovered by doctors likely will lead to the loss of her donor face.

Carmen Blandin Tarleton, 51, has been hoping for a second face transplant.

She was burned over 80 percent of her body when her ex-husband beat her with a baseball bat and doused her body with lye in Vermont in 2007. Her ex-husband died in prison in 2017.

Six years ago, she received a face transplant at Brigham and Woman’s Hospital in Boston, where she’s being evaluated for a possible second transplant.

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Tarleton, who has since lived in Manchester, New Hampshire, told The Boston Globe she had no regrets about the transplant because it dramatically improved her life. She has learned to play the piano and banjo, wrote a memoir and has spoken to many groups about her life. She lost 20 pounds and began walking five miles a week.

“I had such a low quality of life prior to my face transplant. Do I wish it had lasted 10 or 20 years? Of course,” she said.

More than 40 patients worldwide have received face transplants, including 15 in the United States. None of the American patients have lost their donor faces, but last year, a French man whose immune system rejected his donor face eight years after his first transplant underwent a second.

Carmen Blandin Tarleton, of Thetford, Vermont, speaking with reporters at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston in 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

Tarleton’s doctors noted that most transplanted organs had limited life spans, but her situation has been a reminder that despite successes in the field, face transplantation has been experimental and still a young science with many unanswered questions about benefits versus long-term risks.

Dr. Brian Gastman, a transplant surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, which performed the first U.S. face transplant 11 years ago, said more patients are starting to experience chronic rejection. “We all believe every patient will likely need a retransplant” at some point, he said.

Since her transplant in February 2013, Tarleton has had repeated rejection episodes when her new face became swollen and red. Those episodes were successfully treated, but last month, physicians discovered that some blood vessels to her face had narrowed and closed, causing facial tissue to die. If the damage progressed slowly, she could go on the waitlist for another donor face. Under the worst-case scenario, the tissue would die quickly, and doctors would have to remove it and reconstruct her original face.

“We all know we are in unchartered waters,” she said. “I would rather not have to go through a catastrophic failure.”

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It will take at least a month to evaluate Tarleton and reach a decision about a second transplant, doctors said. Aside from the setback with her face, a synthetic cornea transplanted into her left eye recently failed, leaving her almost blind.

“These are not common things to go wrong, but when things go wrong, you have to deal with it,” she said. “I will get back to where I was. How, I don’t know. I will get through this.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.