First face transplant patient Isabelle Dinoire dies in France

Isabelle Dinoire, 49, died of cancer earlier this summer

Isabelle Dinoire, 49, succumbed to two types of cancer earlier this summer after a decade taking powerful immunosuppressant drugs.
These were designed to prevent her body rejecting new tissues, but they always threatened to make Ms Dinoire seriously ill.
Miss Dinoire, from Valenciennes, northern France, was given a new nose, mouth and chin at the nearby Amiens Hospital in November 2005. 

She was rushed to hospital after her pet dog apparently ripped off the vital features, but she had no memory of what happened.
After taking sleeping pills, all the divorced mother of two could remember was waking up with blood on the floor of her flat.
When she tried to light up a cigarette, Miss Dinoire had realised her facial features were missing.
It took a team of medics led by Professor Bernard Duvauchelle, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, 15 hours to perform the medical breakthrough.

Miss Dinoire admitted that she remained uncertain as to whose face she looked at in the mirror

A triangle of face tissue from a brain-dead woman's nose and mouth were grafted onto Miss Dinoire.

It takes an awful lot of time to get used to someone else's face

Isabelle Dinoire

Three years on, Miss Dinoire admitted that she remained uncertain as to whose face she looked at in the mirror every day.
Referring to the dead donor, she said in 2008: "It's not hers, it's not mine, it's somebody else's.
"Before the operation, I expected my new face would look like me but it turned out after the operation that it was half me and half her."
Miss Dinoire said she had not yet worked out her new identity, adding: "It takes an awful lot of time to get used to someone else's face. It's a peculiar type of transplant."

Miss Dinoire said the face was neither hers, nor the dead donor's, but 'someone elses'

Miss Dinoire soon regained sensation back in the transplanted face, but regularly suffered graft rejection.
It was in November last year that Miss Dinoire's lips appeared to freeze up, reported Le Figaro newspaper.
A report in the newspaper said: "Isabelle Dinoire died this summer. She was the first patient in the world to benefit from a face transplant in 2005."

Surgeons have been transplanting livers, kidneys and hearts for many years, but faces have always been different, because they are seen as a sacred, untouchable parts of a person's identity.
Unlike other organs, face transplants are not life-saving operations.
As a result, ethical committees frequently blocked them from going ahead.
But Professor Dubernard, said after carrying out the operation: "Once I had seen Isabelle's disfigured face, no more needed to be said. I was convinced something had to be done for this patient."

It took a team of medics led by Prof. Bernard Duvauchelle 15 hours to perform the surgery in 2005

Some 15 similar procedures have taken place since 2005, with the world's first 'full' face transplant taking place in Spain in 2010, when a man injured in a shooting accident received completely new set of features.
In 2006, surgeon Peter Butler, of the Royal Free Hospital in north London, was given permission by the NHS ethics board to carry out full face transplants in Britain.