Page 3 - MIN.VOS JULY 30,2015

HEALTH:

Boy, 8, Gets Double Hand
Transplant in Surgical First

IN a surgical first, Philadelphia doctors have transplanted donor hands and fore- said. During the surgery, the donor’s hands and forearms were attached by con-
necting bone, blood vessels, nerves, muscles, tendons and skin.
arms onto an 8-year-old boy whose own hands were amputated when he was a Levin remembers the moment he saw one of Zion’s new hands pink up with the
toddler. blood rushing into it. “That hand was now alive,” he said. “That became, instantly,
part of Zion’s circulation, no different than my hand or your hand.”
Surgeons on the team — which also included Dr. Scott Kozin, chief of staff for
Shriners Hospitals for Children-Philadelphia, where Zion was first treated — had
already participated in hand transplants for adult patients, but pediatric surgery
is very different, Levin said.

The boy, Zion Harvey; has expressed that the groundbreaking 10-hour operation Not only do 8-year-olds have smaller bones and anatomical structures, they still
performed earlier this month at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was a dream have a lot of growing to do.
come true. He can’t wait for the day he holds his little sister with his new hands. “The issue with children is they have areas of bone called growth plates,” Levin
“My favorite thing [will be to] wait for her to run into my hands as I pick her up and said. “We had to be very careful when we attached the donor hands to Zion that
spin her around,” he said. His mother, Pattie Ray, was overcome with emotion as we did not violate or injure the growth plates because we want his hands to grow
she watched her son being wheeled out of the operating room. and lengthen.”
“When I saw Zion’s hands for the first time after the operation I just felt like he was Zion has responded to the surgery just as his doctors thought he would. “I’ve never
being reborn,” she said. “I see my son in the light I haven’t seen him in five years. It seen a tear, never an untoward face, never a complaint,” Levin said. “He’s always
was like having a newborn. It was a very joyous moment for me. I was happy for him.” positive. And that, in and of itself, is remarkable.”
A 40-member transplant team led by Dr. L. Scott Levin had practiced extensively The surgery may have profound changes on the lives of children who are living
on cadavers before attempting the operation — a worldwide first — on a child. without hands, Levin said. “This is the end of the beginning, not the beginning of
“The success of Penn’s first bilateral hand transplant on an adult, performed in the end,” he added. “We’ve made a big step forward with this operation.”
2011, gave us a foundation to adapt the intricate techniques and coordinated plans
required to perform this type of complex procedure on a child,” Levin, chairman of Thursday, July 30 2015 - ARUBA TRAVELLER
the department of orthopedic surgery at Penn Medicine and director of the hand
transplantation program at Children’s Hospital, said in a statement.
Zion lost his hands and his feet when he was 2 to a life-threatening bacterial infection
that also led to a kidney transplant. Because he was already taking immunosuppres-
sant drugs to stop his body from rejecting the kidney, he was a perfect candidate
for another type of transplant.
The loss of his hands and feet has not slowed down Zion, who runs on prosthetics,
feeds himself and loves playing video games. “He is a child who has accommodated
to the cards life has dealt him,” Levin said.
Still, as he was growing up, Zion secretly wished he might one day have a pair of
hands.
“I hoped for somebody to ask me do I want a hand transplant and it came true,” he

20 INTERNATIONAL