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May 5, 2009 6:01 pm US/Eastern
UPMC Doctors Perform Double Hand Transplant
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ―
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Jeff Kepner, 57, of Augusta, Georgia, is the recipient.
KDKA
First one, now two.
On March 14th, UPMC did a single hand transplant on a 24-year-old former marine from Bethel Park.
On May 4th, the same surgeon, Dr. Andrew Lee, led the nation's first double hand transplant in a 57-year-old man from Augusta, Georgia. He is being monitored in the intensive care unit.
The complicated surgery to attach a human hand with its 27 bones, 28 muscles, 3 major nerves, 2 major arteries, and many tendons, veins, and soft tissues can take many hours - up to 10 hours for just one hand.
For two hands, the procedure was expected to last 20 hours. But UPMC says the 10-surgeon team took just nine.
A donated hand has to match just like any donated organ, but also in skin color, gender and size.
"You can see there are some rubber bands attached to the fingers," Dr. Andrew Lee said referring to the apparatus worn by the patient at an April 2 press conference to discuss the single hand transplant. "So it keeps the fingers straight but does allow the fingers to move on their own to some extent."
The recipient in the double hand transplant lost his limbs to complications from sepsis -- a condition that can occur with severe infection -- with whole body inflammation, low blood pressure and organ failure.
Blood clots in the organs and limbs can kill those tissues and 15 to 60 percent of people with sepsis will die.
The doctors will have to watch for the blotchy rash signaling rejection.
To prevent this complication, they use a special regimen with immune system proteins and donor bone marrow given by vein, and drugs to suppress the immune system.
Before the transplant, the recipient said he was told to expect feeling in his new hands -- after lots of rehab -- in about 4 months.
Stay with KDKA for more details.
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