BOSTON – With an unprecedented laryngeal transplant operation, a man not only regained his voice but returned to singing and now works as a representative. The New England Journal of Medicine reported yesterday the ‘follow-up’ of the first phonation organ transplant operation performed on January 4, 1998 on patient Timothy Heidler, now in his forties, from surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio. The intervention lasted twelve hours and the patient, a victim twenty years before a car accident, astonished the doctors when he spoke his first word after only three days: “hello”. But the surprises did not end: Heidler entered his church’s choir and subsequently began working as a representative. Encouraged by these results, the team that performed the operation is now looking for a second patient and is certain that the transplant can help those who have lost their larynx following trauma or cancer.