A car accident can be pretty traumatic for anyone, and the crash involving Army Pvt. Shamika Burrage was no exception. Two years ago, Burrage was driving her car when the front tire blew out, causing the vehicle to slide several hundred feet and flip several times. Burrage suffered head injuries and spinal fractures, as well as losing her left ear.
The other injuries eventually healed, but Burrage still had to live without her ear. She relied on prosthetics for a while, but recently her doctors at William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso approached her with a new possible solution: to grow a brand new ear for her and attach it to her head.
The only catch is that they’d have to grow the ear inside of her arm.
This particular procedure, called a prelaminated forearm free flap, has been performed a few times before, but never by the Army. Doctors take cartilage from Burrage’s ribs and mold it into an ear shape. They then implant that cartilage beneath the skin of Burrage’s forearm. There, the cartilage can grow into a functional ear, complete with nerve endings and blood vessels. Finally, the ear is removed from her arm and attached to her head, along with extra skin from her arm to cover up the scars.
The procedure is still not completed, and Burrage still has to undergo two more surgeries, but once the procedure is completed the new ear should be virtually indistinguishable from her old one.
“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,” said Lt. Col. Owen Johnson III, her surgeon at WBAMC.
And as for Burrage, she finally feels like she’s beginning to heal. “It's been a long process for everything, but I'm back,” she said.
Source: U.S. Army
