‘Face/Off’ transplant may become reality if surgeons get go-ahead

THE medical world inched one step closer to the realms of sci-fi surgery yesterday as a team of US surgeons claimed to be on the brink of carrying out the first face transplant.

Plastic surgeons from the University of Louisville in Kentucky are in the process of requesting formal permission to go ahead with the controversial procedure to graft the face of a dead donor on to someone who has suffered severe disfigurement. They plan to start hunting for donors and screening prospective patients as soon as they get the green light from the university's Institutional Review Board, which vets new research proposals, New Scientist magazine reported.

Dr John Barker, director of plastic surgery research at the University of Louisville, believes he has waited long enough to test the surgery, which echoes the 1997 thriller Face Off, in which John Travolta and Nicholas Cage swap identities, and said the risks are worth taking.