A woman who was disfigured by a dog bite in May has received a partial face transplant in France. The injury, which made it difficult for the woman to speak and chew, would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible to repair using normal surgical techniques, according to the medical team.

The surgery was performed Sunday at a hospital in Amiens, northern France, according to a joint statement from the hospital and another in the southern city of Lyon, whose doctors worked together.

The woman was in "excellent" condition and the transplanted organs look "normal," the statement said. She wants to remain anonymous, it added.

Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard, one of the surgeons who collaborated on the transplant, told The Associated Press when reached Wednesday that the operation was the world's first of its kind.

But "we still don't know when the patient will get out," he said. He refused to give any other details, saying a news conference would be held on Friday.

Disfigured by a Dog Bite

Scientists elsewhere have performed scalp and ear transplants. However, the claim is the first for a mouth and nose transplant. Experts say the mouth and nose are the most difficult parts of the face to transplant.

The woman was disfigured by a dog bite in May that made it difficult for the woman to speak and chew, the statement said. Such injuries are "extremely difficult, if not impossible" to repair using normal surgical techniques, it added.

The organs were taken from a donor who was brain dead, with the family's consent, the hospitals said. Dr. Dubernard collaborated with Dr. Bernard Devauchelle in the transplant, the hospitals said.

Dubernard also led teams that carried out a forearm transplant on a a 49-year-old New Zealander in September 1998 and the world's first double arm transplant in January 2000 on Denis Chatelier, who lost both forearms when a model rocket he was trying to launch exploded.

Scar-Tissue Masks

Several groups of scientists around the world are working to perfect the technique involved in transplanting faces.

Today's best treatments still leave many people with facial disfigurement with freakish, scar-tissue masks that don't look or move like natural skin.

A complete face transplant, which involves applying a sheet of skin in one operation, has never been done before. The procedure is complex, but uses standard surgical techniques.

Critics say the surgery is too risky for something that is not a matter of life or death, as regular organ transplants are.

The main worry is that if the immune system rejects the transplant, the skin will slough off, leaving the patient worse off than before. Complications could also include infections that turn the new face black and require a second transplant or reconstruction with skin grafts. Drugs to prevent rejection would be needed for life and they raise the risk of kidney damage and cancer.

Such concerns have delayed plans to attempt the operation in England.

In France, ethics authorities rejected an application by doctors to try the surgery last year, but left the door open for partial transplants around the mouth and nose.

Risky and Radical

In the United States, the Cleveland Clinic is among those planning to try a face transplant.

Dr. Maria Siemionow, a surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, said the French do not appear to have tried conventional reconstruction with skin grafts before doing the risky and radical partial face transplant, raising ethical concerns about subjecting a patient to the risks of immune suppression without first exhausting normal remedies.

At least one other partial transplant has been published -- Korean doctors who gave the scalp and ears of a young man to an elderly woman disfigured by the skin cancer melanoma.

That operation raised concerns because the lifelong immune suppression drugs needed to prevent rejection of the new tissue also raise the risk of making the woman's underlying cancer worse. It is not known how that case ended or whether the woman is still alive.