Surgeons use skin from patient's stomach in life-changing face transplant

Surgeons performed a life-changing full facial skin transplant on a man who was too ashamed of his facial burns to live life outside of his home. The Tadzhikistan man, identified as 20-year-old Dilmrod, suffered the burns as a baby, Central European News (CEN) reported.

He appeared on a Russian reality TV show while visiting Krasnodar Krai and chose a surgeon in the region who offered his services. A team of surgeons used a large piece of skin from his stomach to cover his entire face during a 13-hour procedure.

“We could have done a typical procedure whereby every scar was covered with a piece of skin, but we opted for a difficult, ‘out-of-the-box’ decision,” Sergey Bogdanov, head of the unidentified hospital’s burn center, told CEN.

Dilmrod is expected to see significant improvements to his quality of life, with minimal risk of complications. According to the report, Dilmrod is preparing to return to Tadzhikistan, find a job and get married.