BEIJING, Feb. 7 -- The woman who received the world's first partial face transplant revealed her new features to a worldwide audience yesterday and said, "I have a face like everyone else."

    Isabelle Dinoire, her speech heavily slurred and difficult to understand, told her first news conference since November's surgery how she was disfigured by a dog bite last year and thanked the family of the donor who gave her new lips, a chin and nose.

Isabelle Dinoire at a news conference at Amiens hospital in northern France yesterday. (Reuters)

    A circular scar was visible where the face tissue was attached in the 15-hour operation on November 27 in Amiens. Dinoire appeared to still have great difficulty moving or even closing her mouth, which often hung open. But she said that she was regaining sensation.

    "Since the day of my operation, I have a face like everyone else," Dinoire said. "A door to the future is opening."

    "I can open my mouth and eat. I feel my lips, my nose and my mouth," she said. During the news conference, while one of her surgeons was speaking, she lifted a cup to her lips and appeared to drink.

    In terms of colouring, the match between her own skin and the graft appeared remarkable. When she laughed, she was able to slightly lift a corner of her mouth but appeared unable to bring her lips together to form a full smile.

    She said she was pursuing physical therapy and noted that she will have to continue taking drugs to stop her body from rejecting the donated tissue. Yet, she looked forward to the future and said she is eager to return home. "I expect to resume a normal life," Dinoire said. "My operation could help others to live again."

    Her doctors, who also attended the news conference, said they have asked French health authorities for permission for five more such operations. Doctor Jean Michel Dubernard said they want "to give this operation to many many other people in France and in the world."

    Dinoire, a divorced mother of two teenage daughters, spoke frankly about the horrific attack in May by her Labrador. She said that she was wrestling with personal problems at the time, had had a trying week, and "took some drugs to forget," which knocked her out.

    She said she was passed out when the dog bit her and that she did not immediately realize the extent of her disfigurement when she awoke.

    "When I woke up, I tried to light a cigarette, and I didn't understand why I couldn't hold it between my lips," she said. "I looked at myself in the mirror, and there, horrified, I couldn't believe what I saw. Ever since this day, my life has changed."

(Source: China Daily/Agencies)