The plastic surgery research unit at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic has successfully conducted the first ‘near-total’ facial transplant in the world, by replacing almost 80 percent of the 46-year-old Connie Culp’s face!

It was five years back that Culp, after being brutally shot at by her currently-in-prison husband, lost one eye, most of her nose and her upper jaw. The severe trauma left affected not only Culp’s sense of smell and taste, but also her smile and her breathing ability.

In December last year, a team of eleven surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic undertook the 22-hour-long ordeal of transplanting Culp’s face. Placing a dead woman’s facial tissue atop Culp’s face like a mask, they replaced nearly the whole of her face, excluding her forehead, upper eyelids, lower lip and chin.

While Culp’s identity and the incident leading to her disfigured face were kept under wraps thus far, her ‘new’ face has now been revealed. Culp went through 30 operations to salvage her face, prior to the one-of-its-kind transplant, which included bones, muscle, skin, blood vessels and nerves.

Referring to Culp’s facial transplant as “the most complex functional restoration in the world today,” Maria Siemionow, director of plastic surgery research unit of the clinic, said at a news conference: “We think this procedure has changed her life dramatically.”