Face Transplants: Who Gets One, and What It Costs
Three cases, one question: has the patient lost something that surgery on their own tissue cannot rebuild?
Reviewed by Dr. Eron Shehu · 24 Sep 2026
A face transplant is chosen when a person has lost something conventional reconstruction cannot rebuild, such as lips that close or eyelids that blink. Bone, a nose, a palate and a jaw can all be rebuilt from elsewhere on the body. The price is lifelong immunosuppression, and its costs fall due over decades rather than in theatre.
What reconstruction can and cannot rebuild
Over fifteen years, surgeons rebuilt Richard Norris's jaws twice using bone taken from his own legs, across more than twenty major operations. The reconstruction worked, and he still spent those years behind a surgical mask, leaving the house at night. It had rebuilt structure, and his problem had never been a structural one.
Shown in MC-011: Twenty operations rebuilt his jaw. None gave him a face.
Why one transplant surgeon said no
A 34-year-old was referred to a leading face transplant programme seven months after an injury that took his nose, the front of his tongue, his palate, his upper jaw and most of his lower jaw. The surgeon who assessed him performs face transplants, and decided against one, because most of both lips had survived. Everything else could be rebuilt from his own tissue, with no immunosuppression at all.
When the reason is sight
Patrick Hardison's eyes survived the burns he suffered as a volunteer firefighter; his eyelids did not. An eye needs a lid over it to stay clear, and nothing grafted from elsewhere can be made to blink, so more than seventy reconstructive operations over fourteen years could not stop his sight from failing. His transplant in 2015 took 26 hours and he was quoted odds of survival of 50-50. In the end it was an operation to save his vision.
What it costs
The transplant that gave Richard Norris a face in 2012 took 36 hours. The immunosuppressive drugs that kept it later destroyed his kidneys, and he needed a kidney transplant in 2019. That is not an argument against the operation. It is what the operation costs, and the assessment weighs not only what a person has lost, but whether they can sustain a lifetime of immunosuppression to keep what replaces it.
Shown in MC-011: Twenty operations rebuilt his jaw. None gave him a face. · also MC-022
The cases
- 7 monthsbefore he was referredHe was a face transplant candidateThe surgeon who assessed him performs face transplants. He rebuilt this patient from his own tissue instead.
- 15 yearsbefore the transplantTwenty operations rebuilt his jaw. None gave him a face.Reconstruction restores structure. A face is not structure. What the transplant cost him came seven years later.
- 14 yearsand 70 operationsHe was not going blind from the fireHis eyes survived the burns. His eyelids did not, and nothing grafted can be made to blink.