Face transplants were once thought to be science fiction, or the purview of goofy action movies like the Nicolas Cage/John Travolta classic cheeseball Face/Off, but not anymore.  After dozens of individual surgeries and months of recovery, Oscar, a 31-year-old Spanish man, debuted his new face at a press conference in Madrid’s Vall d’Hebron Hospital.  He’s the first person to get a total facial transplant; the process took him a staggering 24 hours!

When I say new face, we’re not talking skin, or just new parts of a face, we’re talking a complete and whole new face.  Skin, jaw, cheekbones, teeth, nose, eyelids… pretty much everything you see in the above picture is brand new parts attached to skull and muscle tissue.  Oscar accidentally shot himself in the face with a shotgun in 2005.  Now, thanks to doctors, he’s going to get a new lease on life.  Eventually, they say he’ll recover 90 percent of his former facial function.  He’s already regained his ability to drink, eat soft foods, and has even regained feeling in his face.  Two weeks after the surgery, the new face had taken so well that Oscar needed to be shaved; now that’s impressive!

Plastic surgery gets a bad rap quite a bit, but when they can use it for the right people and in the right cases, it’s a life-saver.

Tags: Vall d’Hebron Hospital, Madrid, Spain, Oscar, man receives full face transplant, man has new face after shotgun blast, man gets face transplant, unusual surgeries, weird surgeries, medical news, weird science, Face/Off

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