A year after his first full eye and partial face transplant, Aaron James is finding beauty in the everyday.
He can finally enjoy solid food again, the simple pleasure of smelling something, and looking in the mirror doesn't make him shudder. And, while most people shy away from the DMV, James gladly traded in his horrifically scarred driver's license to show off his incredible transformation.
“I was given the gift of a second chance and I never take a moment for granted,” James, 47, said in a statement to The Washington Post.
An Arkansas power line worker lost his left eye, left eyelid, nose, lip and a large amount of facial tissue when his face came into contact with a 7,200-volt live electrical line in a horrific workplace accident in 2021.
James, an Army National Guard veteran, woke up six weeks later in the hospital with a cavity where his left eye had been, a protrusion in place of a nose and a hole that barely resembled a mouth.
Doctors amputated his left arm above the elbow. They fitted him with prosthetic limbs. and Taught him how to walk again.
Then in May 2023, surgeons at New York University Langone Medical Center performed historic surgery to replace James' left eye and half of his face with a donor in his 30s who had been declared brain dead.
The study published Monday A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed James' condition after the groundbreaking 21-hour operation, which is the first successful whole-eye transplant in a human and the only combined transplant of its kind.
“The outcomes following this surgery are quite remarkable and may pave the way for new clinical protocols and encourage further research into complex transplants involving vital sensory organs.” Dr. Vaidehi S. Dedania James' ophthalmologist and retina specialist Ophthalmology At NYU Langone.
It's not all good news: James still cannot see in his transplanted eye, and the surgical team reports that he lost some retinal tissue due to damage to the optic nerve during recovery.
But pressure in the eye is normal and blood flow is good, and tests have also shown that the rods and cones – the light receptors in the retina that control vision – survived the transplant.
There is hope that in the future, vision may be restored through whole eye transplants.
“We have completed the work on the eye transplant. Now we need to do more research to understand how to restore vision in the eye.” Dr. Eduardo D. Rodriguez He led the team of 140 people who assisted James in his surgery.
“Our discoveries over the past year have shown promising early results and lay the foundation for further progress and continued research,” added Rodriguez, director of New York University's Langone Institute. Face Transplant Program“I'm really amazed at Aaron's recovery.”
James considers it an honor to be “Patient Zero.”
“Even though I may not be able to see with new eyes, I have regained my quality of life, and I know this is a step forward to help future patients,” he said.
Now, he and his wife of nearly 21 years, Megan, are preparing for another milestone: sending their daughter, Allie, off to college.
“I'm pretty much back to being a normal person and doing normal things,” James happily admitted.
