Leon Dufourmentel

Leon Dufourmentel (1884 – July 29, 1957) was a French surgeon, son of a merchant, who specialized in maxillofacial surgery, leading to reconstructive surgery. Intern of Hospitals of Paris, then leader of the clinical faculty of medicine of Paris. He was the son-in-law of the anatomist Pierre Sebileau, and the father of plastic surgeon Claude Dufourmentel (Former head of department at the Hopital Saint-Louis).

During the First World War, he was responsible for caring for gueules cassees (broken faces), and being led to the creation of units of maxillofacial surgery, he found a method for repairing facial wounds: He described a pedicled vascularized flap from the temporal scalp (popularly called a Dufourmentel flap)(http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/1418/cadre2e.htm) and transferred the tissue to the chin area. This tissue transfer was more reliable than a free skin graft. It was his idea to first use prosthetic inclusions prior to 1930 - then implants used were mostly made of ivory, rubber on the nose.