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| February
19, 2001 |
| Doctors
Say Hand Transplant Likely to Succeed |
LOUISVILLE,
Ky. (Reuters) - A surgical team has heralded the second hand transplant in the
United States and the ninth in the world as likely to last for a Jackson, Mich.,
man who underwent a 13-hour operation over the weekend.
Lead surgeon Dr.
Warren Breidenbach told reporters on Saturday that he anticipated a successful
result from the complex surgery that used the left hand of a brain-dead donor
to replace the hand Jerry Fisher lost in a firecracker accident four years ago.
Breidenbach's
team performed the first U.S. hand transplant in January 1999 at Louisville's
Jewish Hospital, where the marathon surgery also took place beginning on Friday
night.
The first recipient of a U.S. transplant, Matthew Scott, 35, of
New Jersey, has not experienced any major problems from the attachment of his
new hand, which he is able to use for many functions.
Fisher, 36, a gutter-installation
contractor and father of three sons, received the transplanted left hand from
an unidentified donor, whose arm was amputated at the elbow.
Surgeons said
that the donor must be living when the amputation occurs because blood circulation
is essential for the success of the operation, and tissue deteriorates rapidly
after death.
Hospital spokespersons said Fisher would have to remain in
Jewish Hospital for at least three months under close observation against the
possibility of tissue rejection.
They said the estimated $170,000 cost
of the procedure was provided by the surgeons free of charge to Fisher, the president
of a Michigan motorcycle-riding club.
Many hand surgeons have been cautious
about endorsing hand transplants, saying they are highly risky and still in the
very experimental stages. Other hand-transplant operations have been performed
in the past two years in France, Austria and Italy, with apparently successful
results.
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