A 32-year-old Pole, born with an arm stopping at the wrist, has successfully undergone a hand transplant. Surgeons have announced that this is a world first for an adult.
It’s a world first made in Poland! Surgeons from Wroclaw University Hospital (western Poland) announced on Thursday that they had transplanted a hand to a 32-year-old man born with an arm stopping at the wrist. These doctors said on Polish television that it was a world first for an adult.
“This is the world’s first transplant of an upper limb in a man with a birth defect. We are talking about an adult man who lived 32 years without this member, ”said Dr. Adam Domanasiewicz, head of the team of surgeons at a press conference broadcast by private television. Polsat News.
According to theFrance Media Agency, (AFP), the graft comes from a deceased donor. The Agency reports that the operation was carried out on December 15, and a week after the 1 p.m. intervention, the team considers their feat a success. The hand remains, of course, motionless, but the patient is already able to move his fingers. Practitioners therefore want to be optimistic about its future. But also for that of medical research in the matter.
Hope for thousands of people
“This is of colossal importance for the development of transplantology and neurophysiology because until now it was considered that in the event of congenital malformation, transplants could not be performed in the absence of representation (of the organ) at the level of the cerebral cortex which would direct the transplanted limb ”, explained the surgeon. This operation “opens up whole new possibilities for the hundreds of thousands of people around the world who are born limbless and are doomed to prostheses,” added Dr Adam Domanasiewicz.
Piotr will still have a long way to go in learning how to use his hand. He will also need to undergo immunosuppressive therapy. But for the moment, he prefers to talk about a first dream that he will soon be able to realize: “I would like to be able to embrace my loved ones with both my hands. Until now I have always done it with the stump ”, he confided to TVN24, the first Polish news channel.
Dr Domanasiewicz does not hide his joy either: “I am happy. I am a happy surgeon. I achieved something that no one has ever succeeded or even tried, ”he exclaimed to reporters. According to him, similar transplants had only been performed on newborn Siamese twins in Indonesia and Canada.
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