Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption In 2006, Isabelle Dinoire described the moment she saw her disfigured face 
 
 The first-ever person to have a face transplant, Frenchwoman Isabelle Dinoire, has died, French doctors say. 
 
 In 2005, surgeons gave her a new nose and mouth after she was disfigured by her pet dog. 
 
 But heavy use of immunosuppressant drugs weakened her and she succumbed to cancer in April at the age of 49, the BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris says. 
 
 News of her death, announced by a hospital in Amiens, was delayed to respect her family's privacy. 
 
 She told the BBC in 2009 that when she looked in the mirror she saw a mixture of herself and the donor. "The donor is always with me," she said. 
 
 Figaro newspaper said she had suffered another transplant rejection. The strong anti-rejection treatment she was receiving led to two cancers, it added. 
 
 In her BBC interview she said her disfigurement by her dog had come as a result of an attempt to end her life. 
 
 After taking an overdose of sleeping pills, she awoke lying beside a pool of blood, with her pet Labrador at her side. The dog had apparently found her unconscious, and desperate to rouse her, had gnawed away at her face. 
 
 The injuries to her mouth, nose and chin were so extreme that doctors ruled out a routine face reconstruction. Instead they proposed a ground-breaking face transplant. 
 
 She was happy with the surgery but expressed distress at the attention from the media and passers-by that the operation brought her. 
 
 In recent years, face transplants have been performed in several countries, including the US, Spain, Turkey, China and Poland. ||||| FILE - In this Feb. 6, 2006 file photo, Isabelle Dinoire, the woman who received the world's first partial face transplant with a new nose, chin and mouth, in an operation on Nov. 27, 2005, addresses... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Feb. 6, 2006 file photo, Isabelle Dinoire, the woman who received the world's first partial face transplant with a new nose, chin and mouth, in an operation on Nov. 27, 2005, addresses reporters during her first press conference since the transplant at the Amiens hospital, northern France.... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Feb. 6, 2006 file photo, Isabelle Dinoire, the woman who received the world's first partial face transplant with a new nose, chin and mouth, in an operation on Nov. 27, 2005, addresses reporters during her first press conference since the transplant at the Amiens hospital, northern France.... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Feb. 6, 2006 file photo, Isabelle Dinoire, the woman who received the world's first partial face transplant with a new nose, chin and mouth, in an operation on Nov. 27, 2005, addresses... (Associated Press) 
 
 PARIS (AP) — Isabelle Dinoire, a Frenchwoman who received the world's first partial face transplant, has died 11 years after the surgery that set the stage for dozens of other transplants worldwide. She was 49. 
 
 The Amiens University Hospital in northern France said in a statement Tuesday that Dinoire died in April after a long illness. The hospital didn't release any further details and it wasn't clear if her illness was related to the transplant. 
 
 Her family wanted her death kept private. But the hospital went public with the death after Le Figaro reported on it. 
 
 After being severely disfigured by her pet Labrador, Dinoire was given a new nose, chin and lips in a ground-breaking, 15-hour operation in 2005 led by doctors Bernard Devauchelle and Jean-Michel Dubernard in the Amiens hospital. When she first appeared in public with her new face four months later, her speech was slurred and a scar clearly visible — but the fact that she could speak to reporters of having a "face like everyone else" and almost smile was seen as a medical breakthrough. 
 
 The operation changed Dinoire's life and drew international attention. There have been nearly 40 face transplant surgeries around the world since 2005, including one last year in New York that was the first to include a scalp and functioning eyelids. 
 
 However, medications that patients must take to prevent their bodies from rejecting the new organs can cause other illnesses and have severe side effects. Le Figaro newspaper, which first reported Dinoire's death Tuesday, said she had suffered two cancers linked to the transplant and lost partial use of her transplanted lips last year. 
 
 Dinoire, a divorced mother of two teenage daughters, said she was wrestling with personal problems at the time of the 2005 dog attack and "took some drugs to forget." She said she was passed out when the dog bit her. 
 
 Disabled by her disfigurement, she welcomed the opportunity for a transplant from a brain-dead woman. Her doctors said they repeatedly warned her of the risks involved. 
 
 Her operation was "an unquestionable surgical success" and the medical community learned from her experience, said Dr. Jean-Paul Meningaud, who heads the reconstructive surgery department at the Henri Mondor Hospital south of Paris and wasn't involved in treating Dinoire. 
 
 But Meningaud, who has been involved in seven of France's 10 face transplants, is now arguing for suspending the procedures so that the medical community can take stock of whether the long-term benefits are worth the physical and psychological toll they take on patients. 
 
 In Dinoire's case, "The results were very good in the medium term, but the long-term results were not so good," Meningaud said. 
 
 He said that face transplant recipients are having more difficulty with anti-rejection medication than doctors initially predicted, and are requiring more follow-up surgery. 
 
 "It's a rather high price to pay for the patient. It's time to mark a pause," he said. 
 
 Her immune system nearly rejected the transplant twice. A year later, doctors said she was gaining more and more sensitivity and facial mobility, and she got herself a new dog. 
 
 "I can open my mouth and eat. I feel my lips, my nose and my mouth," Dinoire said at a news conference in 2006. 
 
 "I have a face like everyone else," she said. "A door to the future is opening." ||||| Isabelle Dinoire made medical history when she was given a new nose, chin and lips in 2005 after being mauled by a dog 
 
 A French woman who underwent the world’s first partial face transplant has died in hospital aged 49 after a long illness. 
 
 
 
 Isabelle Dinoire, who lost her mouth and nose after a dog bite, made medical history in 2005 when she was given a partial face transplant using tissue from a brain-dead woman in a 15-hour operation at Amiens Picardie hospital. 
 
 Dinoire died in April, Le Figaro revealed, which was confirmed by doctors in Amiens who said they had not previously announced her death to protect her family’s privacy. 
 
 Doctors did not reveal the exact cause of death. Le Figaro reported that Dinoire’s body had rejected the transplant last year “and she had lost part of the use of her lips”. 
 
 Transplant woman tells of her life with a new face Read more 
 
 The drugs that she had to take to prevent her body from rejecting the transplant left her vulnerable to cancer and two cancers had developed, the paper said. 
 
 At the age of 38, Dinoire received a triangular-shaped graft, comprising the nose, lips and chin from a brain-dead donor, to replace parts of her face that had been mauled by her pet cross-labrador. 
 
 Dinoire, a divorced mother of two, later explained the circumstances that led to her losing half her face. After a bad week, Dinoire, who was a seamstress, had taken a large dose of sleeping pills “to forget” her troubles. She woke on her sofa and tried to light a cigarette, and then noticed blood and the presence of her dog beside her. Looking in the mirror, she discovered her terrible injuries. 
 
 For months before the transplant, she had “the face of a monster”, she said. She had no mouth and her teeth and gums were exposed, skull-like, in a “reminder of death”. Most of her nose was missing. But she said she had no hatred for her dog Tanya, who she felt had been trying to save her. 
 
 It was through British press reports that she discovered her donor had killed herself. She said she felt a bond to her “twin sister” through their suicidal urges. “That it was someone who wanted to die, like me … It’s odd to know that she saved me,” she said. 
 
 After the transplant she said she was determined to make a success of her life, learning to eat and speak and also wanting to be able to kiss. 
 
 Two years after the transplant she described in a book that the hardest thing was accepting the inside of “someone else’s” mouth. “It was odd to touch it with my tongue. It was soft. It was horrible.” 
 
 She said of the discovery of a hair on her chin: “It was odd. I’d never had one. I thought, ‘It’s me that has given it life, but the hair is hers.’Sometimes I put my hand to my face to check that it’s still there.” 
 
 Since Dinoire’s partial face transplant, more than 30 people worldwide have had similar treatment.
– Isabelle Dinoire has died 11 years after receiving a new mouth, nose, and chin in the world's first partial face transplant, the Guardian reports. She was 49. The procedure was seen as a medical breakthrough at the time, notes the AP. Dinoire died in April, but her death wasn't announced until Tuesday, as the French woman's family originally hoped to keep it private. The BBC reports Dinoire had been happy with the results of the transplant but not with the international attention it brought her. The announcement of her death mentioned only a long illness, but the BBC reports Dinoire died from cancer, to which she was vulnerable because of the immunosuppressants needed to keep her body from rejecting her new face. The Guardian reports Dinoire wanted "to forget" her problems when she took sleeping pills in 2005. When she came to, she went to light a cigarette only to discover her pet dog had chewed off her mouth and nose. She believed her dog was trying to save her. Dinoire's injuries were too severe for facial reconstruction, leading to the groundbreaking surgery. "I have a face like everyone else," the AP quotes Dinoire as saying a year after her surgery. "A door to the future is opening." But it wasn't easy. Getting used to the inside of a new mouth, for example. "It was soft," the Guardian quotes Dinoire as saying. "It was horrible." And she had lost partial use of her lips last year as her body continued to reject the new face. Nearly 40 face transplants have been performed since Dinoire's operation. (This hand transplant recipient regrets having surgery.)