A New York hospital managed for the first time to transplant an entire eye, along with half-face reconstruction, to Aaron James, a 46-year-old patient who had suffered a serious workplace accident when a high-voltage cable touched his face and injured him. 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 health workers, and lasted approximately 21 hours, as explained by the institution, NYU Langone Health, in a statement this Thursday.
The patient is a veteran from Arkansas who was working as a high-voltage electrician when he suffered the brutal accident in 2021, leaving his face in critical condition. 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 down to the bone, he detailed. 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 known at this time whether sight will also be restored in the transplanted eye, the new organ "has shown extraordinary signs of health, including direct blood flow to the retina," the medical center said.
The operation was led by the director of the hospital's Facial Transplant Program, Eduardo D. Rodríguez, who decided to combine the donor's eye with stem cells derived from his bone marrow. 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.
