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New Ear Grown on Soldier's Forearm in First-of-its-kind Army Surgery
U.S. Army surgeons have grown a new ear on soldier's forearm to replace one that was lost in a car accident.
Doctors at William Beaumont Army Medical Center (WBAMC) in El Paso, Texas, took cartilage from the soldier's ribs to craft a new ear. This was then inserted under the skin of the forearm so that it could grow.
The groundbreaking technique—the first procedure of its kind in the Army—allows the ear to form new arteries, veins and even nerves, meaning the private should eventually regain sensation in the ear.
"The whole goal is by the time she's done with all this, it looks good, it's sensate, and in five years if somebody doesn't know her they won't notice," Lt. Col. Owen Johnson III, chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at WBAMC, said in a statement.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Muad'Dave on Friday May 11 2018, @12:00PM
Does the title seem a little misleading?
They didn't grow an actual outer ear, they grew an outer ear shaped piece of cartilage. I was expecting to read about them taking a stem cell and inducing it to grow into an actual anatomically correct outer ear, not a simulacrum of one.