"You can't simply put a body part on ice for that long, so the surgical team opted for a radical approach: save the ear by attaching it to somewhere else on the body. Per SCMP, Qiu said they chose the foot because the arteries and veins there are compatible with those found in the ear. The foot's skin and soft tissue are also similarly thin to the head's."
"The choice made sense in theory, but it was still a risk. Attaching a body part to a different site to preserve it, known as a heterotopic graft, is not uncommon during procedures like organ transplants. But doing this with an ear and foot had no precedent in medical history. Nonetheless, Qiu's team pulled it off. The initial grafting took ten hours, during which the surgeons meticulously connected the complex web of delicate veins."
A woman surnamed Sun suffered a workplace accident that tore off a large part of her scalp and completely severed her ear. Extensive damage to the scalp and vascular network made immediate reattachment impossible because the skull required months to heal. Surgeons performed a heterotopic graft, attaching the ear to the foot because the foot’s arteries, veins, skin, and soft tissue were compatible. The unprecedented ear-to-foot graft required ten hours of microsurgery to connect delicate veins. Five days after grafting the ear developed venous congestion and turned purplish black, and the team then worked to rescue it over the following five days with manual interventions.
Read at Futurism
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