UCLA Medical Center Surgeons Perform Hand Transplant

Becker's Orthopedic & Spine Review
Written by Laura Miller | March 09, 2011
Copyright © 2011 ASC Communications. All Rights Reserved.

Surgeons at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, led by Kodi Azari, MD, surgical director of the UCLA hand transplant program, performed a hand transplant, the first of its kind in the western United States, according to a hospital news release.

A team of 17 surgeons, anesthesiologists, OR nurses and technicians were involved in the effort to graft the hand onto the patient. When the patient and the donor graft were prepared, the limb was joined with the patient and the surgeons attached the tendons, blood vessels and nerves to complete the surgery. The procedure took four-and-a-half hours.

The patient will begin a physical rehabilitation and regimen of immunosuppressant medication to prevent her body from rejecting the hand. The transplant surgery is part of a clinical trial at UCLA intending to confirm present surgical techniques in hand transplantation, study the return of function to the hands and assess the effectiveness and safety of a less toxic anti-rejection medication protocol.

Read the UCLA release on hand transplant.