For the first time in France, a patient who was able to restore speech underwent a larynx transplant

The intervention caps “ten years of work and research,” the Hospice Civic Hospice of Lyon (HCL), which pioneered the operation, said in a press release published on Tuesday. The first larynx transplant in France was performed on September 2 and 3 in Lyon on a 49-year-old patient, who was thus able to regain the ability to speak, the institution announced on Tuesday.

“From collection to transplantation, the intervention lasted a total of 27 hours,” HCL said in a press release. “The extremely complex operation was performed by a team of ten surgeons led by Professor Philippe Seruse, head of the department of ENT and head and neck surgery at the Croix-Rousse hospital.

Fourth larynx transplant mentioned worldwide

HCL clarified that they waited two months to ensure the patient was in good health before communicating. Twenty years after losing the ability to speak, “Karin, 49, is doing well.” According to the press release, she is still in the hospital and should be able to regain her speech in the coming months.

According to HCL, this is the first larynx transplant in France and the fourth in the world. The first successful laryngeal transplant took place in 1998 in Cleveland, USA, to a man who had lost his vocal cords in a motorcycle accident.

In the medical literature only in 2010 in California, a 52-year-old woman was mentioned who received a thyroid gland and trachea transplant during the same operation. In 2015, Polish doctors announced that they had successfully transplanted several organs of the throat and neck simultaneously, including the larynx.

Lyon hospitals have already undergone the world’s first hand transplant in 1998 and both hands in 2000, carried out by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard, one of the pioneers of transplantation, who died in 2021.