New Face, New Lips, Old Habit (Transplant recipient smoking)

[kskiska]

The world's first face transplant recipient is using her new lips to take up smoking again, which doctors fear could interfere with her healing and raise the risk of tissue rejection.

"It is a problem," Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard, who led the team that performed the pioneering transplant in France on Nov. 27, acknowledged on Wednesday.

The woman's French surgeons made their first scientific presentation on the partial face transplant at a medical conference in Tucson this week, the 6th International Symposium on Composite Tissue Allotransplantation.

The news about her smoking came even as American surgeons said that they were growing more comfortable with the French doctors' decision to try the operation and that they hoped to offer such transplants to more patients.

more…
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/19/health/printable1219318.shtml

[bbinacan]

1. So what?

It's her choice. Not bright, but still HER choice.

[LisaL]

10. The problem is, her new face can reject because of her smoking.

I mean, it's like if a recipient of lung transplant started smoking. Stupid, and a lot of efforts that were put into her getting that new face will be wasted.

[buddysmellgood]

2. I think the point is that she's making a bad choice.

[Radio_Lady]

3. I am appalled! Soon, she will be smoking through a hole in her neck!

The good news is: maybe she still has her own neck!

But when in France, do as the French do! Drink wine -- make love -- smoke away!

Disgusting.

Signed,

("A Rabid Anti-Smoker" -- parents both dead from smoking related illnesses.)

[Bonobo]

4. Stone her! Stone her, I say!

[BattyDem]

5. It's her choice, but ...

I think she's an idiot! She just underwent a brand new procedure. Why do something that would jeopardize the recovery? :shrug: Hey lady ... if tissue rejection occurs, YOU WON'T HAVE A FACE!!! :eyes:

[AlienGirl]

6. Psychological fitness for transplantation

Anyone else catch these bits:

Some doctors have questioned the woman's psychological fitness for the operation because of reports that she had taken sleeping pills in a possible suicide attempt when the dog attack occurred — an allegation Dubernard repeatedly has denied.

and

Dr. Frederic Schuind, a surgeon at Erasme Hospital in Brussels, Belgium, revealed that a hand transplant recipient in his country had made "a mild suicide attempt." The patient had been deemed psychologically stable enough to undergo the operation even though he had attempted suicide as a teenager.
...
Doctors have been encouraged that success rates were roughly 90 percent among the 24 hand transplants performed to date, but a Chinese surgeon surprised the conference by reporting that up to half of the nine or so patients in his country have since rejected the new organs because they couldn't afford immune-suppressing drugs.

Am I being unreasonably paranoid when I think they're suggesting that transplants would just be wasted on depressives and poor people? Are depressives and poor people less worthy of state-of-the-art medical care than others? This is an issue society's going to have to face sooner or later: Who do we value enough to use scarce resources to save?

Tucker

[Gormy Cuss]

11. No, that's exactly how it plays out.

Just as there are arbitrary age cutoffs for certain procedures too unless you have the wealth to pay for it directly.

[feelthebreeze]

7. God, she is so two- faced.

[FredScuttle]

8. Mon dieu

she had half her face bitten off...I think I can cut her some slack for the occasional Gaulloises

[Hekate]

9. Agreed. Have some charity for her addiction; hope she gets help for it

And in case anyone thinks it's relevant, I am a non-smoker; however I had to watch my mother struggle horribly with it until she finally quit for good in her late 40s after an unrelated cancer diagnosis. One of my brothers, 57, will never quit and now has emphysema; the other brother quit a few times before making it stick and I don't think will ever smoke again. My dad's pattern was like my second brother -- same with my son -- I think they could all take it or leave it, and finally left it. My daughter -- she's like my mother, and I don't know what it will take for her to quit for good.

In other words, my observation is that different people respond differently to this drug. I sincerely would like to see Big Tobacco execs and their advertising henchmen consigned to the lower reaches of Hell, but I have a lot of compassion for their victims.

Hekate