First US face transplant patient leaves hospital

AP

In this Dec. 17, 2008 file photo, Dr. Maria Siemionow answers questions during a news conference at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland. Siemionow participated in the nation’s first near-total face transplant. Doctors replaced nearly all of the woman’s face, 80 percent, with that of a dead female donor in a 22-hour operation. The nation’s first face transplant patient, and the fourth partial face transplant in the world, went home from a Cleveland hospital on Thursday Feb. 5, 2009.