A team of Chinese medics have given a teenage girl a new face after growing it omg her breast.
Xu Jianmei, 17, was left horrifically disfigured by a fire when she was just 5 years old. This week, she had surgery in the city of Fuzhou, in Fujian province in the southeast of the country.
Xu (pictured before surgery) had surgery to replace the damaged skin on her face with skin from her chest. She woke up after the operation to find that she once again had a chin, an eyelid and an ear. But she said the best thing now is that she can smile properly for the first time in 12 years.
Ms Xu's parents were unable to afford to pay for her to have plastic surgery but she was given hope when doctors offered to carry out the pioneering operation for free. It meant the girl from a small fishing village could receive the face transplant which was carried out using tissue from her chest. The transplant team implanted a blood vessel from her leg into her chest and then used a water filled balloon to expand her skin to create enough to make a new face.
Video footage from the eight hours surgery shows Xu lying in a hospital bed, barely conscious and severely swollen, but with smooth flesh now replacing the rigid scars of her old face.
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