Chimp Attack Victim Could be Candidate For Face Transplant

Nearly a month after her face was torn apart by her friend's 200-pound pet chimpanzee, Charla Nash continues to lay sedated in a hospital room with severe cosmetic and neurological issues.

Doctors say it's too early to determine if the 55-year-old Connecticut woman would be a candidate for a face transplant surgery, a procedure recently performed for the first time in the U.S. at the Cleveland Clinic where Nash was transferred after the attack.

Dr. Kevin Miller, a trauma surgeon at Stamford Hospital, where Nash was initially treated, told "Good Morning America" today that Nash is responding to some commands, but "this could be a weeks-to-months type process." Doctors' main concerns now, he said, are infection and neurological complications.

Related

Hospital Horrors Even Docs Can't Stomach

Chimp Has Attacked Before, Woman Claims

Lions, Tigers, Bears: Why Animals Attack

Her other doctors elaborated in a statement, saying there were several "critical issues" relating to "a significant brain injury and injuries to her eyes."

"The full extent of these injuries and her potential for recovery, if any, remain unclear," the statement said.

Nash's injuries and the blood loss at the scene and at the hospital, he said, were so severe that many people wouldn't have survived it.

"You could tell this woman, when she came in … she needed to live, she had a reason to live," Miller said.

Nash's twin brother, Michael Nash, told "Good Morning America" that his sister's teenage daughter has been to visit her at the hospital.

"She's a fighter," he said of his twin. "Just hoping she comes out of this as well as possible."