A surgical team at NYU Langone Health in New York City completed the world's first whole eye and partial face transplant.
Eduardo Rodriguez, MD, DDS, director of the Face Transplant Program and chair of the plastic surgery department at NYU Langone, led a surgical team of seven and an operating-room team of 80 through the 21-hour procedure in May, according to a Nov. 9 news release from the health system. It was the fifth face transplant performed under the leadership of Dr. Rodriguez.
The patient, a 46-year-old veteran from Arkansas, was injured in a work-related high-voltage electrical accident, according to the release. The procedure involved transplanting the entire left eye and a portion of the face from a single donor, making it the first human whole-eye transplant in medical history and the only successful combined transplant case of its kind worldwide.
The patient has since undergone a follow-up surgery by Dr. Rodriguez, according to the hospital. Although it is unclear whether the patient will gain sight through the transplanted eye, it has shown "remarkable" results on tests that measure clinical outcomes.
"What we're witnessing now is not something we ever expected or thought we'd see," Vaidehi Dedania, MD, a retina specialist in the ophthalmology department at NYU Langone, said in the release. "The first step is having an intact eyeball; a lot of things could come after that. This is a first in the world, so we are really learning as we go."