Frenchman 'with three faces' Jérôme Hamon dies aged 49

Jérôme Hamon, the first man in the world to have undergone two face transplants – in 2010 and 2018 – and who thus had three different faces during his life, has died at the age of 49.

French face transplant patient Jérôme Hamon has died aged 49. © LP / ARNAUD DUMONTIER

"He was exhausted at the end," Franck Zal, a close family friend and doctor of the Frenchman, told Brittany daily Le Télégramme.

"A week ago I was exchanging text messages with him."

Zal's company developed the technology that made the 2018 transplant possible.

"I want to testify to Jérôme's strength. I was always asking him how he managed to manage it all," he added.

Hamon, who passed away on 16 April, will be laid to rest on Friday in Saint-Thégonnec, Finistère, the region in Brittany where he is from. 

« Un battant incroyable » : doublement greffé du visage, le Landivisien Jérôme Hamon est mort
➡️ https://t.co/6biEUVcs8O pic.twitter.com/5fsz18IPCa

— Le Télégramme (@LeTelegramme) April 18, 2024

Genetic disorder

The 2018 transplant was performed by a team lead by plastic surgeon Laurent Lantieri at the Georges-Pompidou European Hospital in Paris.

Lantieri had also performed Hamon's first total face transplant in 2010.

Hamon suffered from neurofibromatosis type 1 – also known as Von Recklinghausen disease – a genetic disorder that deformed his face.

The first transplant had been a success, as he recounted in the book T'as Vu le Monsieur ? (Have You Seen This Man?) published in April 2015.

• Second face transplant for Frenchman in world-first

But that same year, when he came down with a common cold, Hamon was treated with an antibiotic that was incompatible with his immunosuppression treatment. 

By 2016 he began to show signs of chronic rejection, and his face deteriorated.

In the summer of 2017 Hamon was hospitalised, and by November his transplanted face, which showed areas of necrosis, had to be removed.

Hamon remained "faceless" for two months in intensive care at the Pompidou Hospital until France's biomedical agency found a compatible donor.

The eventual donor was a 22-year-old man who died several hundred kilometres from Paris.

"His dream was to work again. He was a book lover, but he was tired. He couldn't work again [after his 2018 transplant]," Zal said.