The First Ever Tongue Surgery

Surgeons in Austria made history in July by performing an unprecedented tongue transplant on a 42-year-old man who suffered from a malignant tumor on his tongue and part of his jaw.

He underwent a 14-hour operation at Vienna General Hospital in which doctors amputated his tongue and attached the new one.

"The tongue now looks as if it were his own -- it's as red and colorful and getting good blood circulation," said Dr. Rolf Ewers the head of the team of nine physicians who performed the operation. They worked meticulously to attach the nerves of the tongue to the severed nerve endings.

The patient whose name was not released will have to take medication for the rest of his life to prevent rejection.

"It's very unlikely he'll regain his sense of taste," Ewers said. "But (regaining) feeling and primarily, movement, would be an optimal result."

Traditionally, in cases where patients lose their tongues, surgeons remove a small piece of their small intestines and graft that onto the tongue stump, the doctors said. Such patients, however, are never able to speak clearly or swallow again, and must be fed through tubes.

The recipient's "new" tongue was first removed from a brain-dead donor by a separate team of doctors in an adjacent operating room and quickly handed over for transplantation. The donor -- chosen because his blood type and tongue sized matched that of the 42-year old -- was then taken off life support.

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Khorsheed.com – Aug 2003