Soldier Lost Ear In Crash; Docs Grew Her A New One In Her Forearm

EL PASO, TX — A young U.S. Army solider who lost her left ear in a car crash two years ago now has a new ear thanks to a procedure by military doctors in El Paso. Army doctors grew the young soldier a new ear — under the skin of her forearm.

The total ear reconstruction procedure was the first of its kind for the Army. Pvt. Shamika Burrage was 19 when she was returning to Fort Bliss after visiting family when her front tire blew out and the car went off the road.

According to the Army, Burrage's car skidded for 700 feet before flipping several times and ejecting her. Burrage suffered head injuries, compression fractures in the spine, road rash and she lost her left ear.

Her cousin, who was in the car with her, was eight-months pregnant at the time and suffered minor injuries.

Doctors told Burrage she would have bled to death had she not received medical attention for 30 more minutes, the Army said in a press release. Burrage was referred to plastic surgery because she didn't feel comfortable with how she looked, but she was initially resistant to go through with the total ear reconstruction. She ultimately decided it would be a good thing.

The surgery involved harvesting cartilage from the soldier's ribs to carve a new ear, which is then placed under the skin of the forearm to allow the ear to grow. Placing the cartilage under the forearm allows new blood vessels to form, the Army explained. Once the rehabilitation is complete, Burrage will have feeling in her ear.

"The whole goal is by the time she's done with all this, it looks good, it's sensate, and in five years if somebody doesn't know her they won't notice," Lt. Col. Owen Johnson III, chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery at William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, said in the press release. "As a young active-duty Soldier, they deserve the best reconstruction they can get."

Burrage has two more procedures left before the reconstruction is finished. She also hasn't lost any hearing because Dr. Johnson opened up her left ear canal that closed due to trauma.

While the procedure was the first for the Army, it's a surgery that has been used to transplant ears before. In one case, a young girl who was mauled and disfigured by a pet raccoon as a baby received a new ear that she grew in her forearm at Royal Oak Beaumont Hospital in Michigan.

Photo via U.S. Army