On September 23, a team of international scientists performed the world's first hand transplant since a failed attempt was made in the 1960s
Surgeons gave the operation a 50% chance of succeeding, crediting recent advances in immunosuppression technology with making the operation possible. As of September 29, the hand showed no signs of being rejected. When a hand transplant was tried in Ecuador in 1964, the hand was rejected two weeks after surgery.
In the new attempt, Earl Owen from the Center for Microsurgery in Sydney, Australia, Jean-Michel Dubernard of Lyon, and colleagues attached a dead donor's hand and forearm onto the right arm of Clint Hallam during a 13-hour operation at Edouard Herriot Hospital in Lyon. Mr. Hallam, an Australian businessman in his 40s, nearly lost his hand and forearm following a logging accident in 1984. Although the limb was reattached at first, it was amputated in 1989 in Australia.
The hospital said that physicians attached all of the arteries, veins, nerves, tendons, muscles, and skin after setting the two forearm bones of the donor arm. Mr. Hallam is expected to require a year to a year and a half of therapy before gaining full function in the hand, if full functioning is possible.
The surgery in Lyon reportedly surprised physicians at the University of Louisville and Jewish Hospital in Louisville, who plan to try, later this year, what they had thought would be the first modern hand transplant. The New York Times reported on September 25 that Mr. Hallam had also applied to be treated in Louisville.
Although the surgical team for Mr. Hallam's operation was predominantly Australian, the physicians traveled to France for the procedure, because France's laws make more organs and limbs available than in many other countries, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported.
Please be aware that medical advice, diagnoses and physician references cannot be obtained from this site.