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First Head Transplant Candidate Uses Virtual Reality To Learn Adjusting To New Body

By yasmin reyes | Update Date: Nov 23, 2016 09:30 AM EST

A man with a debilitating sickness is the first patient who will undergo the world's first head transplant. To prepare him to adjust to a new body, the doctor employed the use of virtual reality prior to the surgery, which will be happening within twelve months.

The world's first head transplant is already planned and scheduled by doctors who are willing to take extreme medical risks. Italian neurosurgeon, Sergio Cavanero, will undertake the said transplant for a patient who is suffering from muscular atrophy.

Cavanero unveiled his plans last Friday during the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow conference in Scotland. He is joined by Dr. Ren Xiaoping of Harlan Medical University who will help Cavanero perform the grueling 36 hours surgery.

The neurosurgeon also disclosed how he intends to prepare the patient for the operation. However, the medical community raises its worries that if successful, the patient may face a host of problems or what the medical community calls as "unexpected psychological reactions" as reported in Nature World News.

Cavanero will employ Virtual Reality (VR) to help 30- year old Valery Spiridinov adjust to his new body. In so doing, Spiridinov will be trained to look at his body without causing any confusion in his brain.

Cavanero is aided by Inventum co-founder and CEO Alexander Pavlovick who provides the VR system. Pavlovick aims "to develop the world's first protocol" in preparing the patients to achieve bodily freedom once a transplant is successfully performed as reported in Digital Trends.

Cavanero is pushing the transplant to be performed twelve months from now. He is ready to undertake on a head transplant after successfully attaching the head of a monkey in a new body. The monkey head transplant was performed in January.

The head transplant has already a precedent as far back as 1970 when Robert White of the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio successfully transplanted the head of the another monkey.

However, the monkey died after nine days because the body's immune system rejected the head. Cavanero will be the first to perform the world's first head transplant and also apply VR technology in pre-surgery preparation, a groundbreaking medical innovation.

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