Two reports published in the Lancet medical journal on Friday give high hopes to people who suffer from serious disfigurement, explaining that face transplant is an effective way to solve the problem, in spite of the fact that complications do exist and more research is needed.

The studies were mainly founded on two surgeries conducted on two people, a Chinese man who had half of his face ripped off by a bear and a French-Caribbean man who had a rare facial tumor.

Both operations proved to be successful and in spite of the frequent cases of tissue rejection during the first year following the surgery, both men have reintegrated into society, according to the studies released by two different research teams.

The world’s first face transplant was conducted on a French woman, Isabelle Dinoire, almost 3 years ago, after she was mutilated by her dog.

One year later, in 2006, Chinese doctors carried out a face transplant on a 30-year-old man who had been disfigured by a bear. Two years after the surgery, the man recovered, his doctors informed. “This case suggests that facial transplantation might be an option for restoring a severely disfigured face, and could enable patients to readily reintegrate themselves back into society,” Shuzhong Guo and colleagues at Xijing hospital in China explained.

Moreover, a French team described the operation carried out on a 29-year-old man, whose identity was not disclosed and who suffered from a disease named von Recklinghausen, which deformed his visage. He was given a new mouth, nose and chin in a surgery conducted last year. His doctors reported that the patient began working 13 months after the transplant and that his face had not rejected the tissue.

“Our case confirms that face transplantation is surgically feasible and effective for the correction of specific disfigurement,” Dr. Laurent Lantieri from the Henri-Mondor hospital wrote.