Positive results from face transplants FACE transplant surgeries are delivering positive results with few setbacks, a leading surgeon says. Boston surgeon Dr Julian Pribaz led the team that performed the first full facial transplant in the US and also gave the American woman mauled by an out-of-control chimpanzee her new face. Dr Pribaz says progress in the highly experimental discipline has been positive, with few setbacks and failures. Outcomes from complicated "restoration" facial transplants were far superior to the reconstructive surgeries that had been performed in the past, he said. "If you're taking bits and pieces of your back, your belly and legs it's never going to look anything like what it used it look like," Dr Pribaz told AAP. Whereas the possibility of actually taking something that God made, more or less, someone else's face and transferring that, totally changes the game plan and the outcome. That's a new potential way of thinking. He said face transplants were still in the experimental phase, but the results were encouraging. "It's very early on, it's not mainstream," he said. If you're doing an experiment you've got to expect that there may be some failures and problems on the way. Fortunately there haven't been too many of those and the results thus far have been fairly positive. Dr Pribaz's team at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston has performed five face transplants. The first was a full face transplant for a man who suffered severe electrical burns that left him with extreme facial injuries. Dr Pribaz said many people who are candidates for this type of procedure have been living with their problems for years. "To look normal, even human, is an amazing experience," he said. Dr Pribaz is in Melbourne to deliver a lecture on the new concepts that have evolved around face surgery at a plastic surgery conference.