A woman who received a face transplant after suffering severe burns in a domestic violence attack may lose her donor face after doctors discovered tissue damage, she says.
Carmen Blandin Tarleton, 51, is being evaluated for a second face transplant six years after her first transplant, she told the Boston Globe and WMUR-TV.
Tarleton has repeatedly experienced redness and swelling around her new face that doctors could treat. But last month they found that some blood vessels to her face had narrowed and closed, causing facial tissue to die.
”We all know we are in unchartered waters,” she told the Globe. “I would rather not have to go through a catastrophic failure.”
In 2007, Tarleton’s ex-husband beat her and doused her in industrial-strength lye, giving her severe burns over 85% of her body. She lost her sight and was forced to deal with traumatic physical effects.
In 2009, she received a synthetic cornea transplant in her left eye, and in 2013, doctors at Brigham and Woman’s Hospital in Boston performed a rare face transplant. Only about 40 patients worldwide have had the procedure.
”It has given me incredible amounts of healing in many ways,” Tarleton, told WMUR-TV. “I’ve done many, many things because I had a face transplant.”
She’s been walking to the grocery store and laundromat in her home of Manchester, New Hampsire, lost 20 pounds and says she feels good physically.
But she began having trouble in December with the cornea transplant.
Doctors told the Globe they don’t expect any patient with a face transplant to have the face last a full lifetime.
”There are so many unknowns and so many new things we are discovering,” Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, one of Tarleton’s surgeons, told the newspaper. “It’s really not realistic to hope faces are going to last [the patient’s] lifetime.”
”We all believe every patient will likely need a retransplant” at some point, Dr. Brian Gastman, a transplant surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, told the Globe.
Still, Tarleton is glad she went through the first transplant and wants the second.
”It is my wish and my choice to be retransplanted,” she told WMUR-TV.
Speaking with the Burlington Free Press in December, she said, “I’ll give up when I’m gone. If I’m here, I’m just going to move forward.”
