It was a transplant that took almost two years in the making. Now that it's over and is successful, it's giving a man a new lease in life.
For the first time in medical history, a team of doctors was able to transplant a scalp and skull tissue from a human donor to another human. Before, only bone grafts were being used. A woman also received a skull transplant made from a 3D printer.
The patient, James Boysen, 55, had been suffering from diabetes since he was very young. He eventually received a transplanted pancreas and kidney. To minimize the rate of rejection of these organs, he was placed in immunosuppression medication, but this also had a terrible side effect: it increased his risk of cancer.
Later, he developed leiomyosarcoma or cancer of the soft tissues. In his case, it affected the muscles beneath the scalp. The radiation, surgeries, and other treatments left him with a gaping wound that went all the way to his brain, which could not be treated since he was still in medication.
Boysen, who works as a software developer, discovered his previously transplanted organs were failing, but the doctors couldn't give him a new one since he still had an open wound.
MD Anderson and Houston Methodist Hospital then planned on the cranofacial transplant surgery for at least 18 months to save the Austin man's life. They found a donor, who provided not only the scalp but also the pancreas and kidney. By getting them from the same source, the chances of rejection are now minimal.
The entire transplant procedure took almost the entire day, but it was certainly worth it as Boysen emerged with almost no trace of the transplant save for the sutures that run around his head.
He is expected to make full recovery in a center received for newly transplanted patients.
