The world’s first modern hand transplant has ended in amputation two and a half years following the pioneering surgery.
According to news services, doctors said that the patient was noncompliant in caring for the limb.
In September 1998, Clint Hallam of Australia received a new right hand and forearm in an operation co-led by surgeons Jean-Michel Dubernard and Earl Owen in Lyon, France. Reports subsequently began to emerge that Mr. Hallam was not cooperating with his doctors and sometimes lost contact with them.
The hand was finally amputated on February 3 in London following what his doctors called "irreversible rejection stemming from [Mr. Hallam’s] neglect of proper treatment," Reuters news service reported on February 5.
"We know he voluntarily went without drugs for weeks at a time over the two years and failed to follow the plan he willingly agreed to before the actual transplant was performed," said a statement Mr. Hallam’s doctors released to the Associated Press and Reuters.
According to the Associated Press, Dr. Owen said in a television interview that amputation was "an inevitable thing to happen" because Mr. Hallam kept the hand "virtually without immunosuppression" and physiotherapy.
In a separate television program, Mr. Hallam said he only stopped taking his drugs to allow his body to recover from the flu.
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