Team conducts third hand transplant; UofL researchers work with team on anti-rejection strategy
November 30th, 2006
The surgical team at work.
A 54-year-old Michigan man became the third person to undergo a hand transplant at Jewish Hospital in Louisville and the first to receive treatment with only two anti-rejection drugs. Normally three drugs are necessary.
David Savage lost his dominant right hand in a work-related accident more than 30 years ago.
A team of 32 physicians from Jewish Hospital; Kleinert, Kutz Hand Care and the University of Louisville worked 16 hours Nov. 29 to attach the donor hand.
“It was a difficult case,” said Warren Breidenbach, lead hand transplant surgeon and Kleinert, Kutz partner, at a news conference Nov. 30.
The process was complicated by the fact that blood vessels tend to shrink without use.
“It was like closing your house down for 32 years and coming back and deciding you want to take a shower,” Breidenbach said. “There was a lot of spluttering going on last night.”
Breidenbach noted that the surgical procedure used in the transplant is “standard.”
“The surgery is the same as we do when somebody comes in with an amputated finger or hand. The difference is hooking up vessels that have been dormant for some time,” he said.
The risk that the body will reject the new limb also makes transplantation different from reattachment.
Suzanne Ildstad, director of the University of Louisville’s Institute for Cellular Therapeutics, Jewish Hospital Professor of Transplantation member of the surgical team, noted that for the first time with a hand transplant, the surgeons are using a strategy to reduce the number of immunosuppressive drugs.
It may sound trivial that a person normally has to take three drugs to suppress rejection after transplant, Ildstad said, but the toxicity of those drugs, which include steroids, adversely affects the patient’s long-term quality of life.
Savage will take steroids only for the first two days after surgery. He will remain in Louisville for three months while he recovers. Doctors will see him nearly every day, Breidenbach said.
Related Link
Hand transplant information
