Woman Successfully Grows Ear From Arm 74
An anonymous reader writes "In 2008, Sherrie Walters, now 42 years old, discovered that she had rapidly spreading basal cell cancer in her ear. The disease is a type of skin cancer. The doctors pursued an aggressive treatment to combat the destructive disease, removing her ear, part of her skull, and her left ear canal. Though Walters was left without an ear, she was still able to hear with the help of a special hearing aid. A few months ago, doctors from the renowned Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore decided to try a new procedure on Walters. Using cartilage from her rib, the doctors stitched a new ear to match her right one. Then their creation was implanted under the skin of her forearm, where the ear grew for months. ...Doctors attached the ear and blood vessels surgically. Another surgery, conducted this week, gave the ear shape and detail. Dr. Patrick Byrne, a revered plastic and reconstructive surgeon, says that after the swelling goes down and the ear heals, Walters will have an ear that both looks and functions normally."
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Informative)
It was just the external part of the ear, or pinna. Her inner ear, including the cochlea, must have been functional to some extent because she was able to use a hearing aid (presumably a bone anchored hearing aid). The cochlea is not a 'simple' cartaliginous structure like the pinna. It is a complex sensory organ housed within a fluid-filled bony labyrinth, so not something that could be regrown using the technique described. The closest thing to regrowing a cochlea possible at present is probably stem cell research involving inner ear hair cell and auditory nerve regeneration, although obviously electronic cochlear implants and auditory brain stem implants are available.
Amazing! (Score:5, Informative)
Check the photo of the ear in the arm [medicaldaily.com]. Awesome times we live in!
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Informative)
Was that JUST the canal regrown or the Cochlear as well??
Just the outside cartridge. You can see photos of the whole procedure here, including the arm surgury (warning: gruesome):
http://cbsbaltimore.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/sw-microvascular-ear-recon-rfff.pptx [wordpress.com]
It is a Powerpoint slideshow, but opens fine in LibreOffice 3.4.
She was very open about it (Score:4, Informative)