Massachusetts man's voice returns after historic voice box transplant
Surgeons mark medical breakthrough after successfully carrying out rare 21-hour larynx surgery on cancer patient
July 12, 2024
Marty Kedian, a Massachusetts man, miraculously regained his voice and his Boston accent after undergoing the first successful total larynx transplant.
Kedian, 59, had his larynx, or voice box replaced in February at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix to remove a rare form of laryngeal cancer called chondrosarcoma, USA Today reported.
Kedian, who was diagnosed with the cancer 10 years ago and underwent multiple surgeries, said: "I was alive, but I wasn't living. I love to talk to people everywhere I go, and I just couldn't. I felt strange, and I wouldn't go out anywhere."
The procedure was the first time a larynx transplant has been performed on a patient with active cancer, the Mayo Clinic announced said in a news release announcing the surgery earlier this week.
Six surgeons performed the complicated operation, involving multiple veins and nerves, over 21 hours.
"The larynx is really part of a unit, or I like to say, a true biomechanical structure where it is alive," Dr David Lott, chair of the Department of Otolaryngology at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona said.
"The vast majority of people that have problems with just the larynx will also have (other throat) problems just because of how that all is so intricately woven together to work."
The procedure was a part of the first known clinical trial on laryngeal transplantation in the United States, where, according to the American Cancer Society, approximately 12,650 new cases of laryngeal cancer were reported this year.
"If we see that it is actually pretty safe to do this and we see that (patients) can get almost normal, or even half function, back − that's a huge difference for people," Lott said.
Total larynx transplants are not used in cancer cases as doctors are concerned that the immunosuppression required after the procedure can cause cancers to spread, according to the Clinic.
However, Kedian has regained 60% of his voice and can eat most things, exceeding Lotts' timeline for recovery. The first word he spoke in six months was, "Hello" uttered to Lott.
