Doctors at New York University this week announced "the first successful transplant of a partial face and an entire eye." And the road to getting there was both heartbreaking and incredible:
In May at NYU Langone Health in New York City, the surgery was performed on a 46-year-old man who had suffered severe electrical burns to his face, left eye and left arm. He does not yet have vision in the transplanted eye and may never regain it there, but early evidence suggests the eye itself is healthy and may be capable of transmitting neurological signals to the brain.
The 46-year-old man in question is Aaron James. A military veteran, James's face "touched a live wire while he was working as an electrical lineman in Oklahoma in June 2021." Here he is when he was younger with his wife Meagan:
Rendered almost unrecognizable by the accident, James sustained "severe burns to the left side of his face, including his left eye, nose and lips, and extensive damage to his left arm, his dominant limb."
He lost both his left eye and left arm and was in a medical coma for six weeks.
James essentially had his nose and lips burned off (the pic is on the above link for those who aren't squeamish), rendering more than half his face horrifically scarred.
The fellow eventually joined a transplant waiting list; a donor became available in May of this year, leading doctors to quickly get James into surgery. And it was one heck of a surgery:
The portions of the face that were transplanted included the nose, left eyelids and eyebrow, lips, underlying skull, nasal and chin bones, cheekbones, and all of the muscle and nerve tissue under the right eye. The entire left eye and optic nerve were transplanted, and stem cells from the donor's bone marrow were transplanted along with them in the hopes of helping the optic nerve regenerate. The surgery itself lasted 21 hours and involved more than 140 people, including doctors, nurses and support staff.
Here's the American hero, post-surgery:
He looks good. And he has "made a good recovery," able to talk and eat food on his own; he even attended his daughter's recent graduation.
And what about the eye? He can't see out of it yet, sadly, but the signs there are still very promising:
"We ensured that the eye from the donor was in excellent health prior to the transplantation," [NYU opthalmology Prof. Vaidehi] Dedania says. About nine days post-transplantation, "we were able to see that the blood is pumping through the eye and really getting a good flow and good oxygen to the entire retina through the retinal circulation. And that was really, really remarkable," she adds.
One professor noted that the idea of eye transplants has been "science fiction for a long time," yet now it's on the cusp of apparent reality. That's big.
Thank you for your service, Aaron, and God bless you.
Glad such an immense breakthrough could be experienced by one of our fighting men. Remember to thank a lineman the next time you see one: This is what they go through to keep the lights on.
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