Saving you a click:

The patient suffered a horrific workplace accident involving heavy machinery, which tore off a large part of her scalp and her ear with it. The damage to her scalp and vascular network was so severe that restoring the ear at the time was impossible, so the procedure was performed to save the patient’s aural orifice so it could be reattached to her head later.

This case is another example why proper patient care is so important:

But complications arose five days later, when the ear turned purplish black as its connecting veins struggled to send blood back to the heart, causing the blood to pool. Over the next five days, the team rescued the ear with manual bloodletting, a labor intensive process that required almost five hundred individual interventions.

Every hospital cutting nursing jobs to a skeleton crew has blood (and ears) on their hands.

And it's the same with rehabilitation measures: especially with neurological damage after a stroke or brain hemorrhage starting with therapy ASAP preserves and restores function and abilities that are lost if it takes months to get therapy.

thats kind of amazing that you can just graft one body part onto another while waiting for the correct spot to heal enough to actually have a successful reattachment surgery.

For…. Science?

Edit:

The damage to her scalp and vascular network was so severe that restoring the ear at the time was impossible, so the procedure was performed to save the patient’s aural orifice so it could be reattached to her head later.

Okay, but its going to be really hard to find socks in the meantime. Also, dont the hairs that allow you to hear not grow back? I assume the ear will never be useable again. Although I guess the aesthetic appeal is still there

I've heard this idea has been kicked around for a few years now...

It's about damn time!

Foul Tarnished...

Sometimes it can be a perk keeping an ear to the ground.

Congrats. A human spider.

A great milestone for humanity.

I bet somebody has this on their 2026 bingo card

That ear on the foot pic was awesome. Wish there was a shot of the ear back on her head!

Impressive and again a yay for science

"My eyes are up here."

fucking surreal, kudos to the medical team who did this

"accident"

What tf happened to the lady for such a horrific accident to even happen?

I understand the point of this Zoidbergish procedure, but I still have one question - did they bother connecting the nerves and if so, is there tactile sensation on the ear?