Face transplants could be provided on the NHS after regulators confirmed this weekend that they were in early talks to authorise state funding.

With a team of British surgeons planning to carry out the world’s first full face transplants on four patients, the body that decides whether to fund highly specialised treatments said it was preparing to make an assessment for the NHS.

The National Commissioning Group (NCG) said it would need to decide in the near future whether the costs, estimated at £25,000 for each transplant, should be met from the public purse.

Peter Butler, clinical director of surgery at the Royal Free hospital in north London, hopes to lead a team of British surgeons in the first operation of its kind within 12 months.

The cost of the first four operations will be met from charitable funds but the surgeons believe that once the transplants have been shown to be safe, the way will be open to NHS funding.

Adrian Pollitt, director of national specialised commissioning at the NCG, said UK Transplant, the organisation that regulates organ donation, had “put us on notice that we really need to be thinking about it”.

Pollitt added: “The Royal Free is doing a small number of these operations which it is funding from charitable funding. Assuming those are successful, our expectation is that \ would apply to us.”

Butler’s team points out that the benefits of the operations will be carefully assessed before they are offered on the NHS.

Although the NHS is making its theatres available for the operations, they will be paid for mainly through the Face Trust, the team’s charity.

Butler’s transplant team has 31 members including surgeons, nurses and three psychologists to screen out patients who are not mentally strong enough to cope with having someone else’s face and the media attention this will attract.

Isabelle Dinoire, the Frenchwoman who became the first person to receive a partial face transplant, is doing well almost three years after her operation. She lost part of her face when it was bitten off by her dog.

Last week the Lancet medical journal reported other successes. A 30-year-old Chinese man who lost part of his face when he was attacked by a bear, made a good recovery after a transplant two years ago. A 29-year-old French Caribbean man with a disfiguring tumour also received a partial face transplant last year.

An estimated 250,000 people in the UK have a severe facial disfigurement.

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