Skip to content
Face transplant recipient Andy Sandness has his face checked during an appointment with physical therapist Helga Smars at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Sandness, the first to receive a face transplant at the medical center, has the nose, cheeks, mouth, lips, jaw and chin of his donor.
Charlie Neibergall / AP
Face transplant recipient Andy Sandness has his face checked during an appointment with physical therapist Helga Smars at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Sandness, the first to receive a face transplant at the medical center, has the nose, cheeks, mouth, lips, jaw and chin of his donor.
PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Andy Sandness received the Mayo Clinic’s first facial transplant. The surgery came after two young men, one of which was Sandness, decided to take their lives. Sixteen months after transplant surgery gave Sandness the face that had belonged to Calen “Rudy” Ross, he met the woman who had agreed to donate her high school sweetheart’s visage to a man who lived nearly a decade without one.