Throat Transplant In Poland Saves Man’s Voice Box — He Uses It To Whisper ‘Thanks’ For Surgery

Poland’s Dr. Adam Maciejewski has a knack for odd organ transplants. He made the news a couple years ago for giving two lucky people new faces, and has now given a Polish man a new throat.

Impossible as it may sound, a 37-year-old man identified only as Michal has received a windpipe and thyroid gland transplant, as well as the associated glands, muscles, nerves, blood vessels, and skin, the Associated Press reported.

The throat will function as normal when he has recovered.

Michal appeared before the news cameras in Poland, but still hasn’t healed enough for him to talk much above whisper, though he managed to use his donor voice box to say “thank you” for the life-changing surgery. Advanced voice box cancer rendered it nearly impossible for him to breathe, swallow, or speak. Thanks to the transplant, he can now eat what sounds like truly unappetizing “liquefied, mushed food.”

This isn’t his first transplant – before Michal’s April 11, 17-hour operation, he’d already gone under the knife in 2001 for a kidney. He’d barely recovered from that when he was diagnosed with cancer; his voice box was removed along with his thyroid, and then he began chemo.

The cancer hasn’t come back, but he was still on drugs to suppress his immune system and keep his body from rejecting the kidney. With a poor quality of life, doctors in Poland decided he might as well have surgery on his throat.

After the highly complicated procedure, his greatest threat is rejection and infection.

Doctors the world over are impressed with Dr. Maciejewski’s feat; throat transplants have been attempted before, but never so extensively.

In 2013, a 33-year-old in Poland went under Dr. Maciejewski‘s knife to get a new face in an astonishing 27-hour operation, according to reporting by ABC News at the time. His jaw, nose, cheeks, and eye sockets were rebuilt and skin from a donor placed on his repaired skull. His face had been severely damaged at work by a stone-cutting machine; the procedure was needed to save his life and so was performed immediately.

Also in 2013, the same doctor performed his second face transplant on a woman with a disabling tumor that kept her from chewing, swallowing or talking, Metro UK reported at the time.

[Photo Courtesy Christopher Furlong/Getty Images]