In April 2011, less than one month after the institution completed the nation’s first full face transplant, the face transplant team at Brigham and Women’s institution, lead by Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, performed the nation’s second full face transplant on patient Mitch Hunter of Indiana. Dr. Bohdan Pomahac was in charge of the procedure. The operation was the third one of its kind to be carried out at BWH and the fourth one of its kind to be carried out anywhere in the nation.
Including the nose, eyelids, muscles of facial animation, and the nerves that power them and create sensation, the whole facial region of patient Mitch Hunter, 30, from Indiana was replaced by the team of more than 30 doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists, and residents over the course of more than 14 hours of labor. This included the replacement of the facial nerves. In 2001, Hunter was involved in an automobile accident that resulted in his receiving a severe electric shock from a high voltage electrical line.
On April 9, 2009, Dr. Pomahac’s team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) performed New England’s first partial face transplant—the second in the U.S. and seventh worldwide. In March 2011, BWH completed the nation’s first full-face transplant. The BWH Face Transplant Program, funded by the Department of Defense, continues to seek candidates.
The Hunter family expressed deep gratitude to the donor’s family, emergency responders, and medical teams from Wake Forest University and BWH for their role in Mitch Hunter’s recovery. More information is available at facebook.com/mitch.hunter3.
BWH has a long history of transplant milestones: the first successful kidney transplant in 1954 (earning Dr. Joseph Murray the 1990 Nobel Prize), New England’s first heart transplant in 1984, Massachusetts’ first heart-lung transplant in 1992, and the nation’s first triple organ (1995) and quintuple lung (2004) transplants. By 2006, BWH performed over 100 kidney transplants in a single year, and in 2008, over 30 lung transplants, ranking it among the top U.S. centers.
