Face transplant woman's first words were 'thank you'

THE first post-surgery words of a woman who underwent the world's first partial face transplant were "thank you", and she has since been able to eat strawberries and chocolate, her doctors said yesterday.

Surgeon Bernard Devauchelle said the patient regained consciousness 24 hours after the groundbreaking operation on Sunday.

"There were no post-surgical problems," he said at doctors' first news conference on the French transplant that has set off a debate among scientists over ethics but also won praise as a potentially pioneering, if risky, procedure.