A 22-YEAR-OLD has become the youngest person ever to receive a face transplant – after she blasted herself with a hunting rifle in a horrific suicide attempt.

Katie Stubblefield underwent a pioneering 31 hour operation in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 4, 2017 – over two years after she aimed the gun at her chin and pulled the trigger.

The brave young woman, who now has the face of a mother who died of a drug overdose, told National Geographic: “I get a second chance at life now.”

Katie, from Oxford, Mississippi, tried to take her own life on March 25, 2014, after her boyfriend dumped her.

Her brother Robert, whose hunting rifle the then-schoolgirl had used, told Nat Geo that his sister’s “face was gone” when he found her lying on the bathroom floor.

She was rushed to a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where doctors stabilised her jaw and cheekbones and sewed her eyelids shut to enable her damaged corneas to heal.

Katie’s skull was also opened as medics stopped the bleeding on her brain.

However, when her skin grafts kept failing she was transferred to Cleveland Clinic – a world leader in face transplants.

Doctors in Ohio repaired the youngster’s bone structure, including her nose, nasal passage and jaw.

At the end of 2015, she was finally declared stable and placed on the transplant list in March the following year.

She was given hours of therapy to help her prepare for the aftermath of the operation and the considerable psychological impact having another person's face can cause.

Then on May 4 last year, Katie became only the eighth person in the US to undergo face transplant surgery.

A team of 15 specialist doctors gave her new skin, bone, blood vessels and nerves.

The cutting-edge Cleveland hospital even 3D printed a new jaw for Katie using a scan of her older sister's.

on his birthday
She was discharged on August 1, 2017 and continues to take a variety of immunosuppressant drugs to ensure her body does not reject her new face.

The 22-year-old is also re-learning how to walk and speak while also continuing to undergo therapy.

Katie, raised by her Christian minister father and teacher mother, hopes to complete her studies and become a counsellor helping other survivors of suicide.