Hospital leads the way in pioneering facial transplant method

Kang Xinwang (middle) receives a donation from the Fire Phoenix charity. Photo: Yang Lan/GT

Kang Xinwang doesn't go outside a lot. When his cousins or friends invite him to go out for a walk or a meal he usually declines. If he does go out he spends most of the time with his head down, pretending he's looking at his mobile phone.

As the 23-year-old from Hunan Province says himself, his face is "scary." His father died when he was a baby and an uncle was looking after him when he was just a year old and fell into a fireplace. He was seriously burned and his face was deformed.

He survived the dreadful accident but his face was permanently disfigured. His eyes stare widely, his nose and mouth are horribly damaged and his skin is scarred and mottled where it was burned.

"Every time I go outside people look at me in horror," Kang told the Global Times. His facial deformity has shadowed his entire life. He would like to find a job and live on his own. "But I've been for interviews for jobs where I wouldn't have to be in contact with the public - like night watchmen - but no one wants me."

New hope

The characters in his name ("Xinwang") in Chinese mean new hope and this year Kang has been given a new hope in a radical new medical procedure being pioneered by the Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital.

Bizarrely this sees the young man growing skin for his new face on his chest, via a special dilator. It looks as though the patient has a large tumor but in fact this is allowing the skin to grow so that it will have enough surface area to transplant to his head and face.

He approached the Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital after borrowing money for a consultation there to see if the doctors could help him.

After examining Kang, Dr Li Qingfeng, the director of the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital, and his team came up with a special treatment program.

The department's Dr Liu Kai explained how this worked. Six months ago doctors inserted a dilating instrument into Kang's chest and gradually expanded this as the skin grew around it. It takes about six months for enough skin to grow this way and then it will be time for surgery. Doctors will remove the damaged skin from Kang's face and replace it with the newly grown skin from his chest. The entire program will take about a year and Kang will have to undergo three major operations and four or five minor procedures as doctors carry out grafts for his eyelids and other areas where they are needed.

Nervous but trusting

Kang admitted to the Global Times he was nervous but trusted the skills of the team of surgeons. "Thinking about the past 20 years of pain and humiliation and thinking that I will never have to again see people looking in horror at me gives me a lot of hope."

Dr Xie Feng, one of the surgery team, said Kang was still young and had a long way to go. "He doesn't have a job or a family but we believe that a new face will change things for him. He will have a completely different future.

"This surgery is like building a house. First, you need to lay the foundations and then you construct the house. But that initial building is rough and you have to finish the decorating properly. This takes a lot of time."