World's First Skull, Scalp Transplant Is Successful

Fifty-five-year-old Jim Boysen is the world's first recipient of a partial skull and scalp transplant. It will help with a large head wound following cancer treatment, according to CBS Houston. Boysen is a software developer from Austin, Texas. 

MD Anderson Cancer Center and Houston Methodist Hospital doctors announced Thursday that they successfully completed the operation on May 22.

"It's kind of shocking, really, how good they got it. I will have way more hair than when I was 21," Boysen joked in an interview with The Associated Press.

Doctor's in the Netherlands had success replacing most of a woman's skull with a 3-D printed plastic one. However, the Texas operation is thought to be the first skull-scalp transplant from a human donator, according to The Chicago Tribune.

Boysen also had a kidney-pancreas transplant in 1992 to treat diabetes he has been dealing with since age 5 on drugs to prevent an organ rejection. Unfortunately, the immune suppression drugs raised his risk for cancer, which later developed into a rare type, known as leiomyosarcoma. And later, the radiation therapy required for the cancer destroyed the smooth part of his head. 

The transplant required a 15-hour operation with close to a dozen doctors and 40 other health workers, according to ABC News. It involved a 10-by-10 inch skull graft and a 15-inch-wide scalp graft starting just above his forehead that extended across the top of his head and over its crown. 

"We had to connect small blood vessels about one-sixteenth of an inch thick. It's done under an operating microscope with little stitches about half the thickness of a human hair, using tools like a jeweler would use to make a fine Swiss watch," said Dr. Michael Klebuc, who led the Houston Methodist plastic surgery team.

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