Face Off!

[proman]

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For those of you who have been involved in these new face transplants, a quick question: How is the face harvest coordinated with the solid organ harvests? We've started doing them and ran into the issue of the plastic surgeon saying "one more hour" 10 times.

 

[Idiopathic]

seems like it would suck for the solid organ teams, who would need to be present to expose for the harvest but would then have to wait for the face team to finish. Not sure there is a good way to deal with it. Luckily we havent encountered this at my institution, but it sounds like a nightmare in general.

 

[PMPMD]

I hope they're not harvesting faces first in DCD cases.

 

[urge]

For those of you who have been involved in these new face transplants, a quick question: How is the face harvest coordinated with the solid organ harvests? We've started doing them and ran into the issue of the plastic surgeon saying "one more hour" 10 times.

Speaking out of my vast experience, zero, could they chop the head off, put it on ice, and fly it all over the country while doing the dissection on their seat tray witha plastic fork and knife?

Otherwise looks like you will have to wait. Did some poor soul aneathesiologiat have to ait in the room the whole time?

 

[proman]

seems like it would suck for the solid organ teams, who would need to be present to expose for the harvest but would then have to wait for the face team to finish. Not sure there is a good way to deal with it. Luckily we havent encountered this at my institution, but it sounds like a nightmare in general.

Yeah all the organs were exposed and ready to be harvested as soon as the face was done. The face took a very long time to harvest.

I hope they're not harvesting faces first in DCD cases.

DCD is probably a contraindication to face donation since timing is so important (both donor and recipient).

Otherwise looks like you will have to wait. Did some poor soul aneathesiologiat have to ait in the room the whole time?

Wait we did. I waited a while to do my organs. There were shifts of anesthesiologists and CRNAs to do the recipient. That case went well (33 hours-which was included in the press release). But there's got to be a better way of timing these harvests.