A surgical feat. For the first time in France, teams from the civil hospices of Lyon carried out a larynx transplant on a 49-year-old patient who “could thus sustainably recover the use of speech”, the establishment indicated this Tuesday in a press release.
The “extremely complex” intervention, which took place on September 2 and 3, “lasted twenty-seven hours in total”, from collection to transplantation. Ten surgeons were mobilized during this operation.
A patient deprived of speech for around “twenty years”
The patient, called Karine, had not been able to speak for “around twenty years”. “Today, she is doing well”, specify the HCL, adding that this transplant is the culmination of “ten years of work and research”. “We still had to wait two additional months to be able to announce it, in order to ensure the patient’s good state of health,” they continue. A press conference is planned for Monday, November 20.
This would be the fourth larynx transplant in the world. Lyon hospitals have already hosted the world’s first transplant of one hand in 1998, and of both hands, in 2000, carried out by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard, one of the pioneers of transplantation who died in 2021. But also the first double transplant of the entire arms and shoulders.