U.S. doctors perform first hand transplant surgery
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| A brief look at the surgical process for hand transplantation |
January 25, 1999
Web posted at: 6:57 p.m. EST (2357 GMT)
LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (CNN) -- A team of surgeons has performed the first hand transplant in the United States, attaching a donor hand, wrist and portion of a forearm to a 37-year-old man.
The surgical process, a joint project of the University of Louisville, the Kleinert, Kutz and Associates Hand Care Center and the Jewish Hospital, occured Sunday afternoon at the hospital.
The patient, Matthew David Scott of Absecon, New Jersey, lost his hand in a 1995 firecracker accident. The hospital said he had been using a prosthetic arm.
Scott is a clinical coordinator for Virtua Health System in Gibbsboro, New Jersey and assistant director at the School of Paramedic Science, Camden County College, in Blackwood, New Jersey.
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| Doctors have researched hand transplant surgery for the last three years, but did not accomplish this type of surgery until Sunday night | |
Transplant is 'investigational'
Lead surgeon Dr. Warren C. Breidenback said the hand transplant surgery last 14 to 15 hours. The procedure included attaching the bones with metal plates and connecting nerves and arteries with small stitches.
Breidenback said the Scott was doing well in recovery.
"We are hopeful this will bring him function in the future," he said. "We have a tendency to focus on the event of attaching and transplanting. Remember the real battle and unknown starts now as we progress towards the physical therapy stage over the next six weeks to three months."
Breidenback called the hand transplant an "investigational" procedure with a 30 to 50 percent chance of rejection over the next year.
Other possible dangers include blood clots and infection.
Is it ethical?
He said there are many doctors who, technically, could perform the surgery, but are held back by ethical complications.
The University of Louisville School of Medicine Human Studies Committee and Jewish Hospital Institutional Review Board granted approval to the Louisville transplant last year after three years of research. The proposed hand transplant surgery was announced publicly in July.
Although doctors have been able to attach severed limbs for years, they have been unable to successfully move a limp from a dead donor to a living recipient.
In September in Lyon, France, a team doctors transplanted a donor hand to a 48- year-old New England man in a 13-hour surgery.
The procedure has raised questions from medical ethicists and some surgeons who question whether a non-vital body part such as a hand should be transplanted.
Also, transplant recipients must take strong and dangerous drugs to keep the body from rejecting limbs.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.