First American face transplant patient unveiled

Connie Culp’s face transplant story

Ms Connie Culp, from Ohio, U.S., was shot in the face by her husband, Thomas in 2004. He later shot himself with same gun. However, both of them survived. Thomas was sent to jail for 7 years, while Connie was left without a nose, cheeks, the roof of her mouth and an eye.

46-year-old Connie Culp, mother-of-two, underwent surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in the state of Ohio in December 2008.

A team of 11 doctors at Cleveland Clinic transplanted 80 percent of the face, including a nose, cheeks, lower eyelids, upper jaw, palate and some bone, all taken from a dead woman. Her surgery lasted 22 hours and required a medical team of more than 40.

She underwent a series of 30 operations in a bid by plastic surgeons to remove hundreds of shotgun pellets and bone splinters from her face before finally undergoing the transplant. Every feature apart from her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip and chin was replaced.

Her identity and the incident of how she became disfigured were kept a secret from the public until Tuesday when she appeared briefly at a press conference at the hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.

Ms Culp said, "Well, I guess I'm the one you came to see today."

"While I know you all want to focus on me, I think it's more important you focus on the donor family that made it so I could have this Christmas present,” she added.

Ms Culp told reporters that when her plastic surgeon, Dr. Risal Djohan first looked at her wounds two months after she had been shot, "he didn't think, he wasn't sure, if he could fix me, but he'd try."

"Here I am, five years later...I got me my nose," she said in good humor.

Adding further, Ms Culp said, "When somebody has a disfigurement and don't look as pretty as you do, don't judge them, because you never know what happened to them."

Ms Culp's surgeon, Dr Maria Seimionow, said she had progressed tremendously and added, “Her chance of getting a very good outcome with minimal side-effects is very high.”

It has been estimated that the transplant cost around $250,000 to $300,000, most of which will be absorbed by the clinic itself, as the surgery was experimental.