The ‘guinea pigs’ who had face transplant surgery – podcast | Health

In 2019, Robert Chelsea made medical history, becoming the first black patient to ever have a full face transplant.He had previously suffered from a devastating car crash, leaving his face severely burnt. Once, he recalls to Annie Kelly, a little boy on the street shouted that he ‘looked like a zombie’.Yet if the offer of the surgery seemed like a miracle, he was to find out that life after the transplant was much, much more complicated than he could have imagined.‘Get a new good, clean, healthy strong set of knee pads,’ he tells Annie, of his advice for others thinking of the same procedure, because they will end up praying a lot.Writer, professor and historian Fay Bound Alberti talks through the darker side of the transplants, and questions whether doctors should even be performing them at all. Photograph: Franck CRUSIAUX/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images