First U.S. Face Transplant Gunshot Victim Patient Goes Public

Is there a more tragic — yet hope-inducing — story than Connie Culp’s? In September 2004, the attractive woman’s husband shot her squarely in the face in a murder-suicide. He died. She didn’t. But her suffering continued, in more ways than one.

The shot blew away the center of her face. But now — a sign we are truly in a new century where things will be different — Culp has gotten a new lease on life as she has become the U.S.’s first face transplant patient thanks to a team of doctors at the Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Maria Siemionow, the Cleveland, Ohio, hospital’s director of plastic surgery research and head of microsurgery training, had more than 20 years of experience in complex transplants. By 2004, Siemionow was looking for the right candidate for a face transplant who wasn’t doing it for vanity.

“They are not looking to go out on the street and be beautiful,” Siemionow told CNN in a 2006 interview. “Some of these patients, when they were interviewed just said ‘I want to walk on the street and just make sure I am not sticking out.’ They just want to have a normal face.”

The doctors examined the patient’s history, motivation and ability to understand the risks of the transplant. And they found Culp to be an ideal candidate.

Five years after a gun blast shattered her nose, cheeks and upper lip, she had a band of scar tissue extending across her face.

“The most devastating of all was the fact that society had rejected her and children were afraid of her,” said Siemionow, who led the December 10 transplant operation. Photo See before and after photos of Culp »

Culp, a mother of two and a grandmother, told her doctors she could understand that some adults would shun her.

Today, when she appeared before reporters she looked like this:

Before the operation she looked like this:

ABC News notes that Culp’s resilience saw her through the ordeal. The Washington Post has this online chat with some of the doctors that performed the procedure taking questions from readers. An AP report on You Tube HERE gives details on today’s press conference with Culp talking to reporters.

Now that medical science has developed a procedure to give citizens face transplants, will it soon develop a procedure to give politicians two-face transplants?