‘My daughters never heard me’: Karine, France’s first laryngeal transplant recipient, finds her voice

She lost her speech in 1996 after being intubated following a heart attack. Karine, 49, became the first patient in France suffering from a traumatic laryngeal injury to receive a transplant of this little-known but nonetheless important organ. “The larynx is complex. It is a real switch that allows you to speak, eat and breathe,” recalls Professor Philippe Seruse, head of the department of ENT and head and neck surgery at the Croix-Rousse Hospital in Lyon (Rhône).

It was he who led the operation. But, as he emphasizes, this medical feat is a team effort, made possible by mobilizing twelve of the country’s best surgeons to carry out the operation: “We formed a group that worked on this topic for ten years. » A decade of training and advice from outstanding colleagues from around the world to achieve one of the greatest achievements of Lyon medicine with the first laryngeal transplant in France over the weekend of 2 and 3 September.

“Sampling took ten hours, and transplantation took seventeen hours,” says Professor Seruse. The first cut on the donor’s body was made on Saturday at 9:50 am, which began a race against time. The organ harvesting teams began their work at 4 p.m. The larynx transfer could take place in the evening at 21:45. The patient’s larynx transplant took one night and one morning.

As the professor explains, the most difficult thing was not to transplant the larynx, but to take a living graft: “The larynx is innervated by very small nerves and vascularized by very small arteries and veins that cross, and you have to first disconnect before you can connect again. »

Long months of rehabilitation

Two months after this feat, Karin, a transplant patient, finally begins to speak in a quiet voice. But she still can’t eat. It will likely take at least another six months to achieve this goal. If, according to Professor Seruse, the forty-year-old girl is not yet satisfied with her voice, “which she considers terrible,” Karin is still happy to be able to communicate with her loved ones again, according to the verbatim conclusion conveyed by the doctors. team: “Ten years ago I wanted to get a transplant to return to a normal life. My daughters never heard me. As for my husband, he forgot the sound of my voice! »

It’s time for rehabilitation for the mother. Perhaps the longest and most difficult part, with ups and downs. This is why the medical team, and in particular Professor Lionel Badet, head of the department of urology and transplantation at the Edouard-Herriot hospital in Lyon, is cautious: “Patience and uncertainty are the price to pay. She went for a year of voice, swallowing and breathing rehabilitation. You will have to wait for the nerves in your larynx to grow back, which will take twelve to eighteen months. »

Only at the end of this long period of reconstruction will we know whether the first larynx transplant performed in France was successful or unsuccessful. The civic hospices of Lyon remind you that before this great event, only three transplant operations were officially mentioned in the world, with mixed results. In France, about fifteen patients suffering from laryngeal trauma and in need of transplantation have been identified.