For the first time, a New York hospital managed to transplant an entire eye, including half a face, to a 46-year-old patient who had suffered a serious workplace accident in which he lost his nose, mouth and left arm.
The transplant, which was performed in May, involved a team of more than 140 surgeons, nurses and other healthcare workers, and lasted approximately 21 hours, the institution, NYU Langone Health, explained in a statement this Thursday.
Join the El Sol de México channel on WhatsApp so you don’t miss the most important information
The patient, Aaron James, is an Arkansas veteran who was working as a high-voltage electrician when he suffered a brutal accident in 2021, when his face touched a high-voltage wire.
Even after undergoing reconstructive operations, James lost “his left eye, his left (dominant) arm above the elbow, his entire nose and lips, his front teeth, his left cheek, and his chin to the bone,” explained the health center in a statement.
During those operations, surgeons decided to cut the optic nerve as close to the eyeball as possible so that the patient would have more options in the future, which ended up allowing eye transplantation.
Although it is not yet known whether he will also regain sight in the transplanted eye, the new organ “has shown extraordinary signs of health, including direct blood flow to the retina,” NYU Langone explained.
The operation was led by the director of the hospital’s Facial Transplant Program, Eduardo Rodriguez, who decided to combine the donor’s eye with stem cells derived from his bone marrow.
Join the El Sol de México channel on WhatsApp so you don’t miss the most important information
It is the first attempt to use stem cells in an optic nerve to try to stimulate regeneration. The operation shows that it is possible to perform this type of intervention, but it remains to be seen whether it will have positive effects on restoring vision, or only cosmetic ones.