Disfigured worker's face transplant hailed as life-saving milestone

Polish doctors carried out the world's first life-saving face transplant, the medical centre said, weeks after the 33-year-old recipient was disfigured by a machine in a workplace accident.

"It is Poland's first face transplant and also the first in the world done to save the patient's life," said Anna Uryga, spokeswoman for the Cancer Centre and Institute of Oncology in the southern city of Gliwice.

The man, a stonemason's worker identified as Grzegorz, was maimed on April 23, when a machine used to cut stone ripped out a large chunk of his face.

An attempt to reattach it failed, though it saved the man's vision and part of his face, and because of the breadth and depth of the lesions "his life was on the line", Uryga said.

With time of the essence, doctors were lucky to find a donor within two weeks, a man in his thirties whose family agreed to the operation.

A team of doctors at the centre - the only one licensed to perform face transplants in Poland - performed the 27-hour facial surgery on May 15.