Second-Ever Voice Box Transplant Recipient Talks to ABC News

Jan. 20, 2011 — -- Thanks to a rare and difficult transplant surgery, the once voiceless Brenda Jensen has been given a new larynx, a new voice and a new lease on life.

When an accident with a ventilation tube left Jensen's vocal chords paralyzed 12 years ago, she thought she never would be able to speak again on her own.

With the aid of a mechanical larynx that she would hold to her throat, she could communicate. But the voice was robotic and her paralyzed voice box necessitated that she keep a permanent breathing tube in her throat that prevented her from ever going underwater or even taking a shower.

"The surgery had a lot of risk," she said. "I could have lost feeling in my face, movement in my eyes. I could have been not able to eat or swallow again. But I wanted to talk again and get the [tube] out of my neck."

After the 18-hour operation in October that replaced her larynx, trachea, and thyroid gland, Jensen said she now is "talking up a storm" and looking forward to the last stage in the process when the tube in her throat can be removed.

The procedure, which was done at the UC Davis Medical Center in California, is one of the most complex transplantations because surgeons must reconnect not only blood vessels but microscopic nerves needed for the coordinated movements of breathing, swallowing and speaking.

Now, three months later, Jensen said her "voice improves every day."

"It's been a long road and a rough road, but every minute of it was worth it," she said. "Now when I talk, my friends who know me from way back say they can hear me in there. I heard myself on a recording the other day and I was amazed."

"We are absolutely delighted with the results of this extraordinary case," Dr. Gregory Farwell, lead surgeon for the transplant, said in a press release.

Jensen, who is also a kidney-pancreas transplant recipient, is the second patient to ever receive a larynx transplant. The first was performed at the Cleveland Clinic in 1998 on Tim Heidler, then 40.

The procedure is so rare not only because of the difficulty involved, but because it requires the patient to be on a lifetime of immuno-suppressing drugs to prevent the rejection of the donor tissue. Because Jensen is already on these meds for her donor kidney and pancreas, she was a uniquely apt candidate.