Man who received world's 1st eye and face transplant says it changed his life

Aaron James can't stop looking at himself in the mirror.

The 47-year-old U.S. military veteran and electrical lineman  was badly injured in a workplace accident in June 2021 that destroyed his left eye, chin, nose, lips and left arm, and left much of face badly damaged by electrical burns. 

For a long time afterward, the Hot Springs, Ark., man says he didn't feel like himself. He couldn't smell or taste anything. And wherever he went, people stared. 

But now, one year after he received what his medical team says is the the world's first whole eye and partial face transplant, he's finally getting comfortable again with the face that greets him in the mirror. 

"I see me," James told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. "That's why I look at myself so much, because it's still mind-blowing to me."

James can't see out of his new eye, but his doctors say the fact that it appears healthy and well integrated one year later is a huge win for science, and brings them one step closer to one day being able to restore vision through transplant surgery.

Face transplants are rare, and James's whole eye transplant was a world-first, according to his medical team at NYU Langone Health in New York City, who have described his progress in the medical journal JAMA. 

James says he was already signed up for facial surgery when his medical team approached him about integrating an experimental eye transplant. Both the face and eye were from the same donor. 

He underwent the 21-hour-long procedure in May 2023, a feat made possible through the collaboration of more than 140 medical professionals.

He knew it was risky, he says, and that it might not work. His body could have rejected the new eye. And there was — and still is — no guarantee he will ever regain his lost vision. 

But he also knew that whatever happened, the data his medical team collected would prove invaluable for others in similar situations, he said. 

There are more than 40 million people worldwide who can't see out of both eyes, according to an editorial comment in JAMA, sometimes due to disease, and sometimes because of injury. And there is currently no way to restore that lost vision. 

James's surgery is a step on the path to changing that. 

"They told me from the beginning, you know: This has never been done. We don't know if it's going to work," he said. "But I trusted them."