Face, double hand transplant performed on burn victim

A 30-year-old burn victim has received the world's first simultaneous transplant of part of a face and both hands, French doctors said Monday.

The man, whose name was not released, was injured in 2004 after a accident left him with scars "preventing any social life," Paris' Public Hospital authority said in a statement.

A team of 40 people worked for 30 hours on Saturday and Sunday to perform the transplants at the Henri Mondor hospital in Créteil, a suburb of Paris.

The statement did not provide details on what was transplanted.

French media reports have suggested the upper half of the face, including the scalp, forehead and eyelids, was transplanted.

This is the sixth face transplant in the world. The first partial face transplant was performed in 2005 in France.

Such transplants are controversial, because they are aimed at improving a patient's quality of life rather than saving it.

The two most common complications are rejection of the tissue and side-effects from the immune-suppressing drugs that recipients have to take for the rest of their lives.