Soldier grows ear in arm for transplant, Army says
Two years ago, Army Pvt. Shamika Burrage almost died when she was ejected from her car during a crash in Texas. Afterward, when she woke up in the hospital, she wasn’t whole. Her left ear was gone. But the now-21-year-old is on the path to recovery. And due to a procedure hailed as the first of its kind in the Army, an ear was reconstructed and “grown” under the skin of her right forearm, according to the Army.
No prosthetics were needed. Instead, plastic surgeons used the soldier’s cartilage.
The ear was later attached to Burrage’s head by surgeons at William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso. The Army said Burrage recovered her hearing and that the operation was a success, according to a recent statement.
The reconstruction involved doctors carving a new ear out of cartilage harvested from Burrage’s ribs. The ear was then placed under her forearm skin to let it grow.
The procedure is one of the most complicated ear constructions in the U.S., according to an ABC News report, and allows for the formation of new blood vessels in the cartilage. This means Burrage will also have feeling in her new ear once rehabilitation is complete, the Army said.
“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 the medical center was quoted as saying in the statement.
Losing her ear was just one of many injuries Burrage sustained in 2016 when the front tire of her car blew out, causing the car to skid 700 feet before flipping several times.
Burrage had been driving with her pregnant cousin from Mississippi to Fort Bliss, Texas, when the crash happened. While her cousin managed to escape with only minor wounds, Burrage suffered head injuries as well as compression fractures in the spine.
“I was on the ground, I just looked up and (her cousin) was right there,” she said in the statement. “Then I remember people walking up to us, asking if we were OK and then I blacked out.”
Had she received medical assistance 30 minutes later than she did, doctors said she would have bled to death.
After the accident, Burrage said she didn’t feel comfortable with how she looked and was presented with plastic surgery as an option. While she was initially scared about going through with the reconstruction, she said she wanted to see what doctors could do.
“I was going to go with the prosthetic, to avoid more scarring, but I wanted a real ear,” Burrage said.
There have also been at least two cases in which doctors performed procedures similar to what Burrage underwent. In 2012, a woman lost her ear to cancer and grew a replacement under her forearm skin, ABC News reported. A few years later, doctors in China attempted to grow an ear in the arm of a man who had been in a car accident, according to China Daily.
For Burrage, she may have both her ears, but her recovery is not over. In addition to the transplant, epidermis from her forearm will be used to cover scar tissue in the area around her left jawline, the statement said.
With only two more surgeries left, Burrage said she’s feeling more optimistic and excited.
“It’s been a long process for everything, but I’m back,” she said.