01:42 a.m. Jul 13, 1997 Eastern
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (Reuter) - Surgeons fighting a Florida paralytic's spinal disease have transplanted human embryonic tissue for the first time in the United States, a hospital spokeswoman said Saturday.
Using techniques developed while experimenting on injured cats, neurosurgeons at the University of Florida Brain Institute at Shands Hospital Friday injected human embryonic spinal cord cells into a cavity in the paralyzed man's spine.
The Florida's man's surgery was the first of 10 experimental procedures planned by the researchers through 2001 on people with syringomyelia, a chronic disorder marked by expansion of a fluid-filled cavity within a damaged spinal cord.
Syringomyelia is extremely painful and increasingly curbs feeling and movement, the researchers said.
``Our primary goal in this first clinical experience is to test whether these grafts can survive and, if so, to what extent they can fill the cavity in the human spinal cord as they have in animals,'' said Richard Fessler, the neurosurgeon who carried out the operation.
Researchers said in a news release that the transplant procedure, if successful, could benefit many of the 10,000 Americans crippled each year with spinal injuries, mostly in automobile crashes.
A spokeswoman said the transfer was a first involving human embryonic tissues in the United States. Doctors in Russia have published reports of similar operations, the spokeswoman said.
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