The first patient to receive a donor eye transplant

The surgical team at NYU Langone Health in New York City performed the first successful eye transplant on a living person, Aaron James.

After a work accident in which he lost his left eye and part of his face, Aaron is now able to use his new eye. A team of more than 140 surgeons from NYU Langone Health completed the transplant procedure, which took approximately 21 hours. The operation, according to CNN, included transplantation of the entire left eye and parts of the face from one donor.

It was a medical innovation. Aaron’s eye is now showing “remarkable” signs of health, according to the medical team. Even though he cannot see with his eyes, he remains optimistic that sight may come with time, and that first-of-its-kind procedure could help advance transplant medicine.

When a patient is taken to the operating table after a terrible accident, doctors tried to preserve as much of the optic nerve as possible in hopes of a possible eye transplant. However, there was always the possibility that the donor eye “would not see.”

For vision to occur, there must be some kind of connection between the transplanted eye and the brain. “But I said, ‘Even if it doesn’t work, I’ll have one eye and at least it will look normal, and then you can all learn something from this,'” Aaron said. “You have to have patient zero.” Aaron was listed as a potential recipient in February 2023. The opportunity to receive a whole eye and part of the face transplant became available just a few months later.

This was a “risky” operation for the medical team because Previously, no one in the world had successfully transplanted a human eye to a living patient. “That’s really my biggest hope,” Aaron said. “If I can see, that’s great.”

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