The world's first full face transplant should be announced within the next year, the leader of the UK Facial Transplantation Research Team has said.
Professor Peter Butler spoke after the first facial transplant operation was carried out in the United States, the fourth such operation in the world.
The Cleveland Clinic, in Milwaukee, announced that reconstructive surgeon Dr Maria Siemionow had replaced 80% of a woman's face with that of a female donor.
Professor Butler said: "We congratulate Dr Siemionow and her Cleveland transplantation team and wish the brave patient well for the future."
Asked when the UK team would perform the world's first full facial transplant, Professor Butler said: "We hope to make an announcement about this within the next 12 months."
The team, based at the Royal Free Hospital in north London, has ethical permission for a research programme of four facial transplants.
The world's first partial face transplant took place in France three years ago on a woman who had been mauled by her dog. Two others have been announced since then -- a Chinese farmer attacked by a bear and a European man disfigured by a genetic condition.
Such transplants are controversial, because they are aimed at improving a patient's quality of life rather than saving it, and require recipients to take immune-suppressing drugs for the rest of their life.
The nature of the injuries or disfigurement that prompted the Cleveland case are not yet known.
More details of the patient are due to be made public.
