When doctors transplanted a new eyeball into a human for the first time, they did not expect the patient to be able to see with the eye. But there were other reasons for doing it, and the data gained will help future patients that may actually be able to see.
Aaron James was a high-voltage lineman who was electrocuted in Mississippi in 2021. He suffered multi-organ failure and wasn’t expected to survive. But James survived, although he lost his left arm and most of his face. Doctors also removed his left eye because it gave him so much pain. James was left using a breathing tube and feeding tube due to the loss of his nose and mouth.
In two years, James recovered enough to be a candidate for a face transplant. Researchers approached him about transplanting an eyeball as well. While that surgery had never been done and probably couldn’t restore his sight, the eye would help support his new face and make him look more normal. James agreed, for those reasons and also because they could learn how to do it.
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“I said, ‘Even if it don’t work, I’ll have an eye, and it will be at least normal-looking, and then you all could learn something off of this,’” James tells CNN’s Jacqueline Howard. “You have to have a patient zero.”
The surgery was performed in May. Five months later, James is recovering well, and scientists are studying the signals sent through his optic nerve to his brain. It isn’t sight, but it is something. Read about this groundbreaking surgery at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: NYU Langone Health)
Source: neatorama