Landmark Larynx Transplant - Ucl
Tip: Highlight text to annotate itX
[ Music ]
>> Good morning.
>> Good for you.
>> Say, get me out of the hospital.
>> I want to go home.
>> I've been building
up to doing clinical laryngeal transplantation
for about 12 years.
And in the early part of 2008 I was contacted by my colleague
in America, Peter Belafsky, to say that had just seen a patient
who he felt would benefit from this technology.
She had already had every possible procedure short
of having a transplant so we had exhausted all possible
conventional means of treatment.
It's the first time that the larynx
and trachea have both been transplanted at the same time.
In fact, it's not just those two things, we have the
thyroid gland as well, which is attached
to the front of the larynx.
It's also unique in the fact that we have repaired the nerves
in such a way that we hope the muscles will
in time start to move in the way
that normal muscles do in the larynx.
And so we've borrowed and moved certain nerves around the neck
to make sure that muscles open when we need the airway to open
and close when we need the airway to close.
This operation was a long one, it took 18 hours and it depended
on complementary expertise from a
multidisciplinary team of surgeons.
My part was to assist with the retrieval
and to advise all along and in my research, using a variety
of laboratory techniques, I had worked out the various steps beforehand.
We've been amazed how well it's gone to be honest.
She first spoke a few weeks after the surgery.
You can see from the videos
of that first episode how amazed she is
to hear her voice; there's a brief period and then it dawns
on her that she's actually spoken for the first time.
And this look of amazement and pleasure comes over her face
and it makes the whole thing worthwhile.
Her voice is not normal but it has gradually improved.
It is much better now than it was at that point.
It won't reach normality for a few more months
yet, when the nerves finally grow back
and the muscles become strong.
But I'm very confident that she will have a normal
or near normal voice.
