At the age of 8, American Zion Harvey became the first person on the planet to receive a pair of donor hands as a result of a complicated transplant operation. Two years later, the doctors conducting his case told about the progress, noting that, despite the generally successful operation, this still nascent field of medicine was accompanied by many risks and problems.
While still a baby, Zion lost both hands and both feet as a result of a bacterial infection that quickly became sepsis. In addition to amputation, the poor child also had kidney failure. He needed an early operation for partial transplantation of one of them. After his body recovered from sepsis and kidney transplantation, doctors decided that Zion could be a suitable candidate for one innovative, but very dangerous method: bilateral transplantation of the hands and forearms, which required 40 people to undergo transplantation almost 11 hours of a grueling procedure.
The transplantation was successful, although it was a very hard struggle for Zion. About a year after the operation, the boy could already hold a baseball bat. 18 months after the procedure, the progress of regeneration and restoration of the motor functions of his hands became even more noticeable. Today, he can control movements more coordinatedly.
Zion learned to write, eat, dress and go to the bathroom. The boy became more independent than before the procedure. Unfortunately, he also had to go through eight episodes of rejection by the body of new limbs, within which the cells of his immune system began to attack the tissues of the transplanted hands. These problems were mainly solved with the help of prescribed medications. In addition, Zion continues to attend physiotherapy sessions. Experts say that, having studied the ways in which the child's body was restored after each individual case, they will now be able to improve these processes for future patients.
The first and unsuccessful hand transplantation operation was carried out back in the 60s. Since then, more than 100 people have undergone the procedure of transplanting one or two hands at once with a different level of success. Of particular note is the case of 2000, when Malaysian surgeons transplanted the hand of a deceased child to his identical twin.
Zion's success in 2015 provided researchers with a wealth of useful information to study, especially considering that at the time of the operation the boy was older than the child in the Malaysian case, therefore the level of development of his brain was already less “optimized” for adaptation after the operation.
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