Though he can’t yet see out of it, a brutally injured utility worker from Texas is the first recipient of a whole-eye transplant.
Military veteran Aaron James worked on electric utility lines. In 2021 he accidentally touched a live electrical wire and was burned so severely he lost his eye, his nose, and most of his face.
It’s not only the eye he got, but a transplanted face. If you look at James today, you can see that he was seriously injured, but you would never guess that his entire face had been destroyed and replaced.
To celebrate his new eye, James threw out his old driver’s license and had a new picture taken. Through a press release from NYU’s Langone Health hospital in New York City, James said he’s “back to being a normal guy, doing normal things.”
He can’t yet see out of the eye, but surgeons are hopeful that will change. They say that the light-sensitive nerves in the donor eye survived the transplant which bodes well for future sight. James has already made remarkable progress after a series of grueling surgeries in 2023 that transplanted a face, giving him back a nose and a normal appearance. Since then the National Guard vet, who has served in the Middle East, has regained his sense of taste and smell.
One of his surgeons, Eddie Rodriguez, said the medical team is “amazed” by James’ recovery and there have been “no episodes of rejection” of the transplanted tissue. He attributes this to the “matching process” where a medical team lines up the most suitable donor and uses what they call a “unique immunosuppression regimen” to minimize the chances of rejection.
Organ and tissue transplants can save lives and restore the quality of life, but patients have to take immune system-suppressing medications for the rest of their lives as the body perceives the transplanted tissue as foreign.
Perhaps fortunately, James does not remember the electrocution that nearly killed him, but he remembers the long road to recovery. He lost an arm at the elbow in addition to the destruction of his face. While in the burn unit at a Dallas hospital he lay for six weeks in a drug-induced coma.
James said he was “honored to be patient zero,” the first person in the world to get a transplanted eye. He said he’s happy even if he doesn’t get sight in the eye as it helps him to feel normal and has contributed to future advances that will better help others.
