Eight-year old Zion Harvey lost his hands and his feet when he was two years old to a life-threatening bacterial infection that also led to a kidney transplant.
Now he is the proud owner of new hands and forearms after a 10-hour surgical transplant performed by doctors in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia early this month.
Zion is the first child to get a double hand transplant.
The procedure is so complicated that the medical staff had to create tags with descriptions such as “ulnar artery” and attach them to the various vessels, bones, nerves and tendons that needed to be connected, said Levin, who is director of the hand transplantation program at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and who chairs the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Penn Medicine.
Levin stressed that while Zion’s bravery is to be applauded, the operation wouldn’t have been possible without a grieving family, fresh off a crushing loss, putting its courage on display as well. It’s remarkable, he said, that Gift of Life Donor Program, a regional organ procurement organization, found Zion a pair of hands mere months after he was placed on a waiting list in April.
Source: CNN
