​In 2015, Zion Harvey made history as the first child to successfully receive a double hand transplant.

Zion’s hands and feet were amputated when he was 2 years old due to a life-threatening sepsis infection that resulted in the failure of multiple organs.

.

Then, at 8, he underwent a complicated 10-hour surgery in which the hands of a donor were surgically connected to his arms and became his own.

Now, at 10 years old, Zion can use his new hands to perform everyday tasks that other children might take for granted, such as reading and writing, making his lunch and gripping a baseball bat.



“He was able to grip a baseball bat, which was something he wanted to do, by about a year, but now he can do it more powerfully with more coordinated motion between the right and the left hand,” said Dr. Sandra Amaral, medical director of the hand transplant program at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who was involved in Zion’s care.

“Most of his functional outcomes or progress have been really related to doing things more efficiently and effectively,” she said. “A few new things that he can do: zip his pants, rip open a granola bar by himself and manipulate it to eat it.”



Additionally, Zion can go to the bathroom without any help, said Dr. L. Scott Levin, chair of the department of orthopaedic surgery at Penn Medicine and surgical director of the hand transplantation program at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who led the surgery.

.

After Zion’s bilateral hand transplantation surgery, Levin said, his team closely monitored the boy’s brain, using MRI and other imaging techniques to assess the progress of his hand function. After all, since Zion was 2, his brain had been used to functioning with no hands. After his surgery, that suddenly changed.

.

“When we gave him hands and connected his nerves to his new hands, those areas of the brain (that are responsible for hand function) woke up,” Levin said, adding that it took only a few months for those brain regions to light up in the brain images.

.

Zion’s bilateral hand transplantation procedure now holds clues to how such surgeries could be performed in other children, something that Levin said is being explored at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Source: http://www.naijadailyfeed.com/2017/07/21/first-double-hand-transplant-involving-a-child-declared-a-success/

Lalasticlala
Mynd44 comman see