Surgeons announce the first "full eye" transplant in the world

On Thursday, New York’s surgeons announced the first surgery to cultivate a ‘whole eye’ of a person, which is a great achievement, although the patient did not prepare his eyesight in the cultivated eye. The surgical team at the “Langon Health” Medical Center said that during the six months since the operation that was part of the facial transplantation, shows signs of its safety, including blood vessels that work well, and the retina appears in good condition. “The fact that we planted an eye is a huge step forward,” says Doctor Eduardo Rodriguez, who led the surgical team. Rodriguez added that doctors initially intended to grow the eyeball as part of the facial transplant for cosmetic purposes. He continued: “If it happens and the vision is somehow restored, it will be incredible, but the purpose for us was a technical process,” and that the eyeball stays alive. He said they would follow up what could happen in the future. Aaron James (46 years old), who was the operation, was a worker in high -pressure electricity lines, and a former soldier escaped an accident in his work due to a high electric current that destroyed the left side of his face, nose, mouth and left eye. At the end of May, Rodriguez and the surgical team spent 21 hours on surgery, and the big challenge was to give blood flow to the cultivated eye. After several reconstructive operations, James could not eat or drink naturally, and he had a problem to talk, and therefore he agreed to undergo facial transplant, including the first operation in the world that planted a donor eye. The transplant comes from one donor, making it “the only successful joint transplant case of its kind”, according to the “Langon Health” center. Communication between the eye and the brain and at the moment there is no connection between the eye grown with the brain by the optic nerve, and to stimulate the recovery of the link between the donor’s optical nerves and the recipient, surgeons withdrew the stem cells from the spinal cord of the donor and injected them into the optical nerve during the agricultural process, and to protect the damaged cells. Rodriguez pointed out that the cultivation of a living eyeball opens the door to many possibilities, adding that other research teams have developed ways to connect nerve networks in the brain to the unintended eyes by, for example, to reinstate electric poles to re -see. “If we are able to work with other scientists who work to find other ways to restore vision, or to restore images of the cerebral cortex responsible for processing visual data, I think we will be a step.” James, who kept his eyesight in his right eye, knew he would not regain his sight in the cultivated eye. He said that the doctors “never expected them to succeed, and that they had told of it from the beginning.” He added: “I told them, even if I couldn’t see, you can learn something that benefits the next person. That’s how the beginning is. I hope it will open a new path.” After a few weeks in hospital and rehabilitation, James was considered recovery from the transplant, and although he is having trouble talking, it is an improvement, and he works to restore the feeling of his lips and open his jaws more than he can, according to the Treatment Medical Center. However, Rodriguez said, James could regain his eyesight in the cultivated eye. He explained, “I don’t think anyone can claim to see. But they can’t claim that he won’t see. At this point, I think we are satisfied with the result we have achieved through a very technical process.”