A hospital in Yunnan province has created a human ear for a disfigured patient through the use of 3-D technology. It is the world’s second case of auricular reconstruction and transplantation.

The patient, surnamed Zhang, suffered major injuries during a car accident, which disfigured his face and caused him to lose an ear. In an effort to help Zhang, the Second Affiliated Hospital to Kunming Medical University launched a plan to recreate a human ear with 3-D technology.

“We buried an expander in the patient’s arm, injecting water every day in an effort to obtain a piece of human skin. Once the skin was obtained, we took several samples of costicartilage from the patient to reproduce a human ear,” Wang Jihua, a doctor from the hospital, told Yunnan.cn, the artificially constructed ear will have to grow for another three months before it can finally be transplanted onto the patient’s head.