UPMC doctors want to perform face transplants

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Doctors at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center are trying to convince the school to let them perform face transplants.

Surgeons must convince the university’s Institutional Review Board that such transplants are as necessary as organ transplants. They applied for the approval in October and say the process could take months or years.

The plastic surgeon leading the effort, Dr. Joseph Losee says, “Without a face, you can’t communicate, you can’t interact.”

Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic performed the first face transplant in the United States in December 2008. That happened four years after they received approval from that hospital’s review board.