A first bringer of hope. American surgeons announced Thursday that they had performed a complete eye transplant on a patient just over five months ago, an unprecedented operation on a global scale.
Doctors “astonished” by the results
Several months after surgery, the patient’s eye still shows signs of very good health, including blood flow to the retina. However, the man has not recovered his sight, at least for now, since the transplanted eye does not communicate with the brain through the optic nerve.
These results leave the experts “stunned,” said Dr. Eduardo Rodríguez, who directed the procedure, in a press conference.
“There are millions of people who have lost their sight and we are not saying that we are going to solve this today,” said the surgeon. “But without a doubt we are a little closer,” he wants to believe.
21 hours of operation
The operation lasted approximately 21 hours and was performed at the end of May by a team from NYU Langone Health University Hospital in New York. In addition to the left eye and its socket, surgeons also transplanted the nose, lips and other facial tissues taken from a donor.
The recipient patient’s name is Aaron James. This 46-year-old army veteran was the victim of a work accident in 2021 that could have cost him his life, when his face touched a high-tension electrical cable.
Since he had to take immunosuppressants at all costs to avoid rejection of the grafts made in his face, this former soldier was an ideal candidate to try an eye transplant.
“I was able to kiss my wife”
Aaron James, whose right eye still functions normally, appeared during the press conference with his face completely uncovered and his left eye closed under his eyelid, still unable to move the latter naturally.
“I can see or not, that’s how it is,” he said, thanking the donor and his family. “You have to start somewhere and I hope this starts something that we can improve for the next patient.”
“I feel good. I still can’t move or blink, but now I have sensations. (…) I can smell again, eat,” he rejoices.
“For the first time in a year and a half I was able to kiss my wife,” he confided, adding that he wanted to “go out in public” again.
“Much hope”
For now, uncertainty remains over whether or not Aaron James will be able to see again.
“In medicine, you never like to say never,” says Vaidehi Dedania, a retina specialist at NYU Langone Health.
“We’ll continue to follow it and see how things develop. But we have a lot of hope.” “Much of the retina is preserved and our tests show that it is capable of generating a signal,” she explained.
The doctors did not expect such good results and a team was urgently formed to explore different avenues that could help restore sight. “I hope this opens a new path,” hopes Aaron James.
Years of research
“This is a big step forward,” said surgeon Kia Washington, who has been working on this problem for 10 years at the University of Colorado.
“Many people still doubted” that such a transplant “was possible in humans.”
In the past, complete eye transplants had already been performed in small animals, whose vision in some cases was at least partially recovered, explained surgeon Kia Washington.
Will it one day be possible to restore sight to a person blind from birth through a transplant? It’s still a distant horizon, responds Kia Washington. But “I think yes, it will happen in the next few decades.”
Aaron James was now able to return to live in Arkansas with his wife and daughter, and returns to New York every month for follow-up appointments.
Source: BFM TV
