US surgeons perform world’s first whole eye transplant

A team of surgeons in New York announced they had performed the world's first transplant of an entire eye in a procedure widely acknowledged as a medical breakthrough.

The surgery involved removing part of the face and the whole left eye of a donor and grafting them onto a line worker, Reuters reports.

The transplant was performed on 46-year-old military veteran Aaron James, who survived a 7,200-volt electric shock in June 2021. His left side of the face, nose, mouth and left eye were severely damaged.

The 21-hour transplant helped Aaron undergo a partial facial transplant. In six months, doctors noticed positive dynamics in the organ, as the blood vessels and retina functioned well.

"The very fact that we transplanted the eye is a huge step forward, which has been thought about for centuries but never done," said Eduardo Rodriguez, who led the team of doctors.

The doctors aimed not to restore vision but to preserve the viability of the eyeball.

To accelerate the restoration of the connection between the optic nerve and the recipient's brain, the surgeons collected stem cells from the donor's bone marrow and injected them into the nerve. However, the connection between them has not yet been established.

Other research groups are developing a way to connect the brain's nerve networks to blind eyes by inserting electrodes. At the same time, James did not expect to be able to see with his transplanted eye.

However, Rodriguez assures that James still has a chance to regain vision in the transplanted eye.

"I don't think anyone can say that he will see. But for the same reason, no one can say he won't see. At this time, I think we are quite satisfied with the result we were able to achieve with the help of a technically very complicated operation," the surgeon commented.

Rubryka previously uncovered how since 2019, Ukrainian laws have allowed adults to become posthumous organ donors. However, not everyone knows exactly how to act, who to turn to, and whether the procedure is too bureaucratic.