A 3-D model of the surgery (Photo: AP).

    BEIJING, Jan. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- The world's first face transplant recipient has picked up her old habit of smoking, which doctors worry could interfere with her healing and raise the risk of tissue rejection.

    The news about her smoking came even as American surgeons said that they were growing more comfortable with the French doctors' decision to try the operation and that they hoped to offer such transplants to more patients.

    Dr Jean-Michel Dubernard, who led the team that performed the pioneering transplant in France on November 27, said: "It is a problem."

    The 38-year-old Frenchwoman received a new nose, chin and lips from a brain-dead donor after being mauled by her dog last spring. The woman had been identified only as Isabelle because of French privacy laws.

    The doctors said the woman suffered a tissue-rejection episode last month, but was now doing well.

    However, they said she had resumed smoking, which besides being bad in general for health, was especially a problem after surgery because it impaired circulation to tissues and could raise the risk of rejection.

    Some doctors had questioned the woman's psychological fitness for the operation because of reports that she had taken sleeping pills in a possible suicide attempt after the dog attack took place - an allegation Dubernard repeatedly had denied.

    He said she received extensive psychiatric evaluation and counselling before the operation.

  ¡¡The woman's French surgeons made their first scientific presentation on the partial face transplant at a medical conference this week. American doctors at the conference said it was time to stop debating whether the French operation was ethical or wise and focus now on making such transplants as safe and widely available as possible. Enditem

    (Agencies)