Product Description
In December 2008, Maria Siemionow, M.D., made headlines by performing the world’s first near-total face transplant. It was an extraordinary event in a thirty-year medical career marked by many astonishing milestones. Now she recalls her remarkable journey in Face to Face, a unique memoir that traces the path from her childhood in Poland to her medical training there and in Finland. Her arrival in the United States in the 1980s, as a fellow at the Christine Kleinert Institute for Hand and Microsurgery in Louisville, Kentucky, confirmed her future as an award-winning researcher and world-class surgeon, leading ultimately to the controversial facial transplant procedure that revolutionized the field. Weaving fascinating medical science with a captivating life story, Face to Face explores the emotional, cultural, and moral implications of the twenty-first-century advances that have helped Dr. Siemionow’s work thrive. She also provides details of the perseverance that led her to become the first U.S. physician to receive Institutional Review Board approval for facial transplantation surgery, followed by the poignant selection process as she was bombarded with compelling requests from prospective patients, and ultimately the successful completion of an operation that captured the world’s attention. Both a chronicle of a groundbreaking surgery and a deeply moving story of personal courage, Face to Face also shares Dr. Siemionow’s inspiring philosophy about the identities, physiological traits, and biological needs that combine to create our individual faces. Celebrating this triumph of form and function, she transforms the way we feel when we look in the mirror—and the way we think about those who dedicate their lives to healing and hope.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 3 reviews)

Review of Fafe to Face by Mary M. Wooley

4 Stars
February 06, 2010
Awe inspiring story of Maria's journey of dedication, determination , hardships faced while developing and achieving her goal. Tale of a modern Polish woman !

Includes a great deal of medical insights and a survey of transplant science in general by Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)

5 Stars
November 17, 2009
FACE TO FACE: MY QUEST TO PERFORM THE FIRST FULL FACE TRANSPLANT includes a great deal of medical insights and a survey of transplant science in general. What it doesn't include are any photos of transplant results, or in-depth case histories. Thus medical collections will be satisfied with the detailed history and examination of the medical challenges involved, while general-interest holdings will wish for more patient details.

Disappointing by dlc (WA United States)

2 Stars
June 21, 2009
I was hoping to find here a book which described the world's first face transplant. It would have been fascinating stuff, no doubt. Instead I read the biography of the surgeon, Dr. Maria Siemionow, interspersed with a bit of detail on transplant science. The author's childhood and the rigors of her training make for dry reading, and the details of the ground-breaking, first-of-it's-kind face transplant surgery (which should have easily filled half the book) is strangely relegated to a three page epilogue.

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