For the first time in New York, the hospital managed to transplant a whole eye into a patient.

A New York City hospital has successfully transplanted an entire eye, including half a face, for the first time from a 46-year-old patient who was involved in a serious work accident that left him losing his nose, mouth and left arm.

The transplant, which took place in May, involved a team of more than 140 surgeons, nurses and other health care workers and took about 21 hours, NYU Langone Health said Thursday in a statement.

The patient, Aaron James, is from Arkansas, where he was working as a high-voltage electrician when he was involved in a violent accident in 2021 in which his face came into contact with a high-voltage wire.

Even after reconstructive surgeries, James lost “his left eye, his left (dominant) arm above the elbow, his entire nose and lips, his front teeth, his left cheek and chin down to the bone,” the institution detailed. health.

During the operation, 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, ultimately allowing for an eye transplant.

While it is not yet known whether the man will regain vision in his transplanted eye, the new organ “showed unusual signs of health, including direct blood flow to the retina,” the hospital said.

The operation was led by the director of the hospital’s facial transplant program, Eduardo Rodriguez, who decided to combine the donor’s eye with stem cells obtained from his bone marrow.

This is the first attempt to use optic nerve stem cells to try to stimulate regeneration.

The operation showed that such an intervention is possible, but it remains to be seen whether it will have a positive effect on vision restoration or only an aesthetic one.