In the picture below you can see how he had to use his current artificial hands to sign the documents for the surgery and it doesn’t appear to be an easy task. I hope this is a success for both hands. It’s somewhat risky and recently one failure in California with a hand transplant had to be amputated due to lack of blood flow, but the good news is that he could still have another transplant and it had lasted for 8 months. This is the only failure to date of a hand transplant.
He has been functioning for 10 years without hands. The surgery took 9 hours and when you look at the pictures, it took 10 surgeons to make this a reality. He will have a few months of rehabilitation. He has plans to wanting to learn how to play the piano too. BD
The 57-year-old Augusta, Georgia, resident underwent the first double hand transplant in the United States on Monday at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
On Friday he remained at the transplant intensive care unit.
He is "very stable, awake and alert, and he's talking with us," said Dr. W. P. Andrew Lee, who led the nine-hour surgery. "He is having good circulation in the transplanted hands." Kepner shows no signs of transplant rejection, Lee said.
On January 22, Kepner signed up to be a candidate for the medical center's clinical trial for hand transplants. He had to pass a screening process, which included a physical and a psychiatric evaluation of his coping skills, his expectations and his understanding of the transplant.
Three months later, Kepner received the call. There was a donor whose hands matched Kepner's skin color, gender and size.
After getting permission from the donor's family, the surgeons removed the donor's hands extending midway to the elbows. A team of surgeons attached arteries and veins, repaired tendons and nerves and set the bones for both hands. The surgery involved 27 bones, 28 muscles, three major nerves, two major arteries, multiple tendons, veins and soft tissue.
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