A surgical first for Bermuda could help a hospital patient paralysed from the neck down breathe on his own.

And that means the young man — who has been in the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital for several years after an accident and can only breathe with the aid of a ventilator — could be discharged home.

KEMH doctors flew US medic Dr Raymond Onders, a Professor of Surgery in Cleveland, Ohio, and an world-renowned expert in the procedure, to supervise local surgeons Dr Boris Vestweber and Dr Herman Thouet.

Dr Onders said: “The team at the hospital was tremendous. The operation could not have been done better anywhere else in the world.”

A report in the Bermuda Hospitals Board’s in-house magazine explained that it was more cost-effective to bring Dr Onders to the Island, rather than transport the patient to Ohio.

Hospital chief of geriatrics Dr David Harries said: “It is hoped the patient will be able to make do without his ventilator completely. The plan for him to be eventually discharged and cared for at home.”

The technique — called diaphragmatic pacing — involves surgeons attaching electrodes to the patient’s diaphragm, with wires leading out of the body to a pacemaker, which uses electrical impulses to contract the diaphragm, allowing the patient to breathe.

And chief nursing officer Judy Richardson said the family of the man — who has not been named — were “extremely happy” that the surgery could be performed in a familiar environment by staff they know and trust.