Isabelle Dinoire
| Isabelle Dinoire | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1967 Valenciennes, France |
| Died | 22 April 2016 (aged 49) France |
| Known for | First partial face transplant |
Isabelle Dinoire (1967 – 22 April 2016) was a French woman who was the first person to undergo a partial face transplant, after her Labrador retriever mauled her in May 2005. She underwent a 15-hour operation in November 2005 in which surgeons transplanted the nose, lips and chin from a brain-dead donor at a hospital in Amiens. She died at age 49 in April 2016, though her death was not announced until more than four months later.
Dinoire lived in Valenciennes, northern France, and she was the mother of two children. According to The Times, she had signed a contract with British documentary maker Michael Hughes before the operation.
Dinoire's dog mauled her face after she passed out from an overdose of sleeping pills. Some reports following the initial surgery claim that her daughter said that the black Labrador cross (named Tania) was "frantically" trying to wake Dinoire after she took sleeping pills in a suicide attempt, and that Dinoire wrote about her suicidal feelings in her own memoir. The hospital denied this, saying that she said she had taken a pill to go to sleep after a family argument and was bitten by her labrador during the night.
In a statement made on 6 February 2006, Dinoire said that "after a very upsetting week, with many personal problems, I took some pills to forget ... I fainted and fell on the ground, hitting a piece of furniture."
Dinoire's daughter reported that the family is sure that the dog, which was euthanized, mutilated Dinoire by accident. They believe that the damage was caused when the dog, finding Dinoire wouldn't wake up, got more and more frantic, and began scratching and clawing her. Dinoire was "heartbroken" when Tania was euthanized and kept a picture of the Labrador by her hospital bed; she later adopted a different dog to aid in her recovery after surgery.
Dinoire's injuries affected her nose, lips, chin, and cheeks. She wore a surgical mask to cover the injuries on the lower part of her face, as the upper face was not affected.
Doctors and the media debated whether the donor and/or the recipient had attempted suicide, with reports stating that the donor had hanged herself. The family of the donor told the funeral director who handled the donor's death that it had been accidental. Local French newspapers stated that Dinoire's daughter said that her mother had attempted suicide. Dubernard said that the recipient had not tried to kill herself. Olivier Jardé, an orthopedic surgeon from Amiens and a member of the French National Assembly, said that both the donor and the recipient had attempted suicide.The Sunday Times, a British newspaper, stated that Dinoire had said in a telephone interview that she had tried to commit suicide. In her 2007 memoir, Dinoire stated that the donor had killed herself, and this "gave Dinoire a feeling of sisterhood" with her.
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