Spain performs world’s first face transplant from an assisted-dying donor
A Barcelona hospital, Vall d'Hebron University Hospital, completed the world’s first face transplant using tissues from a donor who had legally chosen medically assisted death; a surgical team of about 100 specialists performed the complex operation to reconstruct facial tissue for a patient with severe infection-related damage, enabling partial functional recovery. The donor had consented to donate post-mortem donation following MAID, allowing careful matching and preparation; the patient will require ongoing immunosuppressive therapy and long-term follow-up to monitor graft function and rejection risk, with ethical and legal protocols observed.