Polish-British surgery team repairs severed spinal cord

Doctors from Wrocław, with the help of their colleagues from University College London, have managed to restore the motor functions of a 40-year-old fire fighter. Dariusz Fidyka had been paralyzed from the chest down after his spinal cord was severed in a stabbing four years ago. He has regained sensation in his lower extremities and is now able to walk with a walking frame. The procedure involved transplanting the patient’s olfactory ensheathing cells – or OECs – from the nose to repair the damage in the spinal cord. This is the first time such a procedure has been shown to work on a human. “We estimated that without this treatment, our patient’s recovery chances were less than 1 percent. However, we observed a gradual recovery of both sensory and motor function that began four months after the surgery,” said dr Pawel Tabakow of the Wroclaw Medical University in Poland. “We believe that this procedure is the breakthrough which, as it is further developed, will result in a historic change in the currently hopeless outlook for people disabled by spinal cord injury,” said Professor Geoffrey Raisman from UCL.