Eight-year old Zion Harvey lost both his hands and feet to a serious infection when he was 2 years old but the boy now has better chances at having a normal life after he became the youngest person to receive a double-hand transplant.
The boy from a suburb in Baltimore underwent the 10-hour surgery in early July at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia but doctors only publicly disclosed the operation this week.
The procedure involves both surgical and non-surgical components and requires patients to undergo medical screenings and other evaluations.
The surgery, which involved a 40-member group of doctors, nurses and surgeons and was led by Children's Hospital hand transplantation program director L. Scott Levin, had surgeons attaching the hands and forearms of the anonymous donor by connecting veins, arteries, muscles, nerves and tendons.
The medical team consists of four groups, two of which focused on the donor's hands and the remaining two focusing on the recipient. The bones in the boy's arm were initially connected using steel plates and screw. The arteries and veins were then connected using microvascular surgical techniques.
When the blood started to flow through the reconnected blood vessels, the medical team repaired and rejoined each of the muscles and tendons, reattached the nerves and closed the surgical sites.
Zion contracted sepsis when he was a toddler resulting in multiple organ failure and which led to the amputation of his hands and feet. He was 4 years old when he underwent a kidney transplant with the organ coming from his mother.
His legs prosthetics already allows Zion to walk, run and jump and doctors hope that he will be able to achieve more after the surgery.
A number of American adults already received similar transplants in the past years but Zion is the youngest to have the surgery. The operation would require him to be treated with immune-suppressing drugs in his entire life to make sure that his body does not reject his new hands.
Doctors said that the boy is already using anti-rejection drug for his donated kidney and this made him a good candidate for the hand transplant
''It was no more of a risk than a kidney transplant,'' Pattie Ray, the boy's mother, said. ''So I felt like I was willing to take that risk for him, if he wanted it - to be able to play monkey bars and football.''
