An eight-year-old boy from Philadelphia has received a double hand transplant, becoming the youngest patient ever to undergo the procedure.
Zion Harvey’s hands and feet were amputated when he contracted a life-threatening infection at age two. The brave Baltimore youngster also survived a kidney transplant and went on to live a full life despite his disability, writing, feeding himself and playing video games. However, doctors felt he would be a good candidate for an operation they now believe will offer hope to hundreds of thousands of patients in the future.
More than 40 doctors, nurses and experts at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia made up a four-part medical team tasked with performing the surgery, each part working on one of Zion’s arms or on one of the donor hands.
During the complex surgery, the donor hands and forearms were attached, firstly fusing the bone before attaching the veins. When the first part of the operation was successfully completed, the tendons, nerves and muscles were connected.
“The success of Penn’s first bilateral hand transplant on an adult, performed in 2011, gave us a foundation to adapt the intricate techniques and coordinated plans required to perform this type of complex procedure on a child,” said Dr. L. Scott Levin, chairman of the department of orthopedic surgery at Penn Medicine and director of the hand transplantation program at Children’s Hospital.
“CHOP is one of the few places in the world that offer the capabilities necessary to push the limits of medicine to give a child a drastically improved quality of life.”
Watch Zion’s story in this inspiring video, released by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
