Scottsdale – The Associated Press and Fox News report that Cleveland resident Connie Culp, the gunshot victim who underwent the first face transplant in the U.S., is now able to smell, taste food and breathe through her nose. The report was published in the Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery.

It has been almost a year since surgery was performed at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic. Up to now, the transplanted tissue has integrated with existing tissue and she has had no significant complications, it was reported. According to the report, Culp is speaking better and has regained her sensory and motor abilities on the face. “This really does open up new frontiers both for transplanting more of the face and for offering it to individuals with previous reconstructive failures,” said Dr. Wayne Larrabee Jr., a clinical professor of head and neck surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle and editor of the journal.

The first US face transplant followed successful human face transplants in France and China. The Cleveland Clinic was the first to perform such an operation in the United States. Doctors transplanted the face of an organ donor on a woman who was disfigured from a gunshot wound by her husband in a failed murder-suicide attempt in 2004. The shotgun blast left her horribly disfigured and blind. It also destroyed her nose, jaw and cheeks.