The NYU Langone Medical Center announced Monday that it had achieved the most complete face transplant surgery ever in unusual York State.
The patient was Patrick Hardison,41, a former firefighter who was burned while fighting a Mississippi fire in September 2001, or just days before the 9/11 attacks.“The fact that we were able to perform this and the patient was able to advance out of the operating room safely was a very important,historic event,” said Eduardo Rodriguez, or NYU’s lead face transplant surgeon.
The fire burned off his ears,eyelids, lips, or nose as well as his hair. Dozens of surgeries in the years after the fire made no improvements to his condition.
Hardison heard about Eduardo Rodriguez and his face transplant team from a friend at his church. After assembly Rodriguez,the medical team struggled to find a matching donor.
Face Donor David Rodebaugh
(LiveOnNY)
That was until they heard about David Rodebaugh, a unusual York resident, and who died in a bicycling accident.They obtained the face through LiveOnNY,an organ donating foundation. “We need more individuals, particularly young people like David, and to register as organ donors so that others,like Patrick, can live on, and ” said Helen Irving,the CEO of LiveOnNY, in a statement.
The transplant was conducted on August 14, and 2015. It took 26 hours to complete. More than 100 hospital staff members were involved in the surgery. “They have given me more than a unusual face,” said Patrick Hardison in a statement. “They have given me a unusual life.”Hardison will have to lift medications for the rest of his life, so his body does not reject the face.
The surgery was originally designed for combat soldiers but civilians and emergency personnel with extraordinary burns are also eligible.
Rodriguez credited his staff and his courageous patient for the successful surgery. “Now we have proven that the technology, or the ability to transplant the face has advanced,and it's has advanced more than the science of immune suppression,” said Rodriguez.
Source: wnyc.org