UCLA Performs Hand Transplant As Part of a Clinical Trial Program Relative to Surgical Techniques

The UCLA Hand Transplant Program is just beginning and the donor came from San Diego. This is not a one person surgery as it took a team of 17. It’s a very long surgery too with beginning at 4:30 am and didn’t finish until 2:30 pm. The match on the hand from the donor as almost identical, good for the patient. The patient is a 26 year old woman who lost her hand in a car accident and this is the 13th hand transplant done in the US. The UCLA hand transplant program was announced in July of 2010.

UCLA Hand Transplant Program Announced – Research Study Program And Afflicted Patients Can Apply

The UCLA Newsroom has posted a video that covers the transplant.

UCLA Newsreel-Hand Transplant

Not all have been successful but as time goes forward the techniques are getting better. Back in 2009 one California man had his hand fail due to a lack of blood circulation. BD

ScienceDaily (Mar. 7, 2011) — Surgeons at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center performed the first hand transplant in the western United States in an operation that began one minute before midnight on Friday, March 4, and was completed 14-and-a-half hours later, on Saturday, March 5.

The transplant was performed on a 26-year-old mother from Northern California who lost her right hand in a traffic accident nearly five years ago. UCLA is only the fourth center in the nation to offer this procedure, and the first west of the Rockies. This was the 13th hand transplant surgery performed in the United States.

A team of 17 surgeons, anesthesiologists, operating room nurses and technicians were involved in the effort to graft the hand onto the patient. The operation began with two surgical teams working simultaneously to prepare the donor graft and the recipient. At 4:30 a.m. on Saturday, four-and-a-half hours after the operation began, the donor limb was joined to the recipient. The surgeons then began the complex work of attaching tendons, blood vessels and nerves to complete the surgery, which concluded at 2:30 p.m

UCLA performs first hand transplant in the western United States