Marty Kedian, a Massachusetts man, miraculously regained his voice and Boston accent after undergoing the first successful total larynx transplant.
Kedian, who was diagnosed with cancer 10 years ago and underwent several operations, said: “I was alive but I wasn’t living. I love talking to people everywhere I go and I just couldn’t. I felt weird. and I wouldn’t go anywhere.”
The procedure was the first time a larynx transplant was performed on a patient with active cancer, the Mayo Clinic said in a news release announcing the surgery earlier this week.
“The liver is really part of the unit, or I like to say, the actual biomechanical structure where it’s alive,” said Dr. David Lott, chairman of the department of otolaryngology at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona.
The procedure was part of the first known clinical trial of laryngeal transplants in the United States, where about 12,650 new cases of laryngeal cancer have been reported this year, according to the American Cancer Society.
“If we can see that it’s actually quite safe and we can see that (patients) can get almost normal or even half function back — that makes a huge difference to people,” Lott said.
However, Kedian has regained 60% of his voice and can eat most things, exceeding Lotts timeline for recovery. The first word he spoke after six months was: “Hello” to Lotto.
