US Army Doctors 'Grow' Replacement Ear for an Accident Victim Inside Her Arm

In a show of rare medical ingenuity, a team of doctors from Texas found a creative way to create a replacement ear for an army private who had lost her ear in a near-fatal car crash. The surgeons “grew” a fully functional ear for her, complete with nerve endings, cartilages and blood vessels inside her arm!

The patient Shamika Burrage had survived a car crash, in which she lost her left ear. She met with an accident in Odessa, Texas in 2016, while she was driving back to Fort Bliss with her cousin after visiting her family in Mississippi when a tire exploded. The car skidded off the road flipped a few times. Her cousin suffered minor scrapes but Burrage had major injuries to her head and spine and a severed left ear. For a while, she used a prosthetic ear to make up for the imperfection but was keen on having a more permanent solution rather than just a cosmetic coverup. She didn’t like the idea of having to live with a funny-looking prosthetic ear all her life.The plastic surgeons at an army medical centre in Texas took her concerns seriously and hit upon the genius solution to grow her an ear.

For this, the surgeons took cartilage out of Burrage’s ribs and shaped it into an ear. Next, they placed it under the skin of her arm in a technique called prelaminated forearm free flap. Lt. Col. Owen Johnson III, chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery at William Beaumont Army Medical Center.

The ear thus grown goes beyond a basic cosmetic purpose. Since it was grown inside the human body, it will have arteries, veins and nerves and will be sensitive to touch and other sensations. The 21-year-old army private is still to undergo two more surgeries for the procedure to be considered complete.

Burrage admits that she was first shocked to hear of the surgeons’ plans to grow her an ear bus still decided to go for it because she didn’t want a prosthetic ear for the rest of her life. Dr. Johnson was motivated to make it happen for Burrgage since he didn’t want the young 21-year old to be stuck with an artificial ear for the rest of her life.

"The whole goal is by the time she's done with all this, it looks good, it (has feeling), and in five years if somebody doesn't know her they won't notice," he said. "As a young active-duty soldier, they deserve the best reconstruction they can get," he mentioned on the official US Army website.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 11, 2018 10:12 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).