Experts can offer patients hope

No attempt has ever been made to carry out a face transplant.

However, experts say the procedure has been technically possible for some years. Cases already exist wherein patients' faces have been torn off in accidents and successfully reattached.

The operation would involve removing the face from a corpse within a few hours of death and grafting it on to the patient. The first people to undergo the operation are likely to be burns victims whose bone structure remains intact but whose facial injuries are so extensive their appearance cannot be improved by conventional skin grafts.

The anatomical structure of the face is such that surgeons believe maintaining the blood supply, and reconnecting the nerves, would be relatively straightforward.

Current methods for reconstructing severe facial deformities use tissues from other parts of the body, usually the arms, buttocks or back. More than 100 operations are often required to make the result look and work like a normal face.

Experts believe an entire face transplant would involve much less surgery and produce a far better outcome.

However, face transplants would still be fraught with risk. Patients would require lifelong drugs to prevent the body rejecting the donor tissue. Experts estimate that there is a five per cent chance the drugs would not work, proving fatal. There would also be at increased risk of developing certain types of blood diseases and cancers.