Medical breakthrough: American (46) receives the world’s first eye transplant | Medical

A few months ago, doctors performed an eye transplant during a partial face transplant on an American man. After six months, the transplanted eye has shown important signs of health such as properly functioning blood vessels and a beautiful-looking retina.

“The mere fact that we have transplanted an eye is a huge step forward, something that has been thought about for centuries, but never implemented,” says Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez, who led the operation.

Until now, doctors have only been able to transplant the cornea, the clear front layer of the eye.

The patient, Aaron James, a 46-year-old military veteran from Arkansas, underwent a 21-hour operation to replace half of his face. James survived a potentially fatal 7,200-volt electric shock while working as a power line worker in 2021, but it destroyed the left side of his face, his nose, his mouth and his left eye.

Initially, doctors only planned to include the eyeball as part of the face transplant, Rodriguez continues.

“If there was some kind of vision recovery that would be great, but the goal was to do the technical surgery and allow the eyeball to survive,” Rodriguez said.

To promote healing of the connection between the donor’s and recipient’s optic nerves, surgeons took adult stem cells from the donor’s bone marrow and injected them into the optic nerve during the transplant, hoping they would replace damaged cells and heal the nerve. would protect.

“Transplantation of a viable eyeball opens up many new possibilities,” Rodriguez said, even if vision is not restored in this case.

“If we can collaborate with other scientists who are working on other methods to restore vision or return images to the visual cortex, I think we are one step closer,” Rodriguez said hopefully.

James, who can still see out of his right eye, knew he might not regain vision in the transplanted eye, but he didn’t mind.

The doctors “never expected it to work and they told me that from the beginning,” James said. “I told them, ‘even if I can’t see… maybe you can at least learn something to help the next person.’ Hopefully this will open a new path.”

Dr. Rodriguez has not ruled out the possibility that James could still regain vision in the transplanted eye.

“I don’t think anyone can claim that he will see. But they also can’t say he won’t see,” Rodriguez said. “At the moment I think we are quite satisfied with the result we have been able to achieve with a technically very demanding operation.”

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