Three months after his transplant, Jean-Michel Schryve, 51, confided his happiness to find his hands. He undertakes a long period of rehabilitation.
“The first night after my transplant, I cried with happiness,” Jean-Michel Schryve told journalists, who does not hesitate to speak of a “miracle”. The 51-year-old man is the 7th patient to benefit from a double hand transplant at the Hospices Civils de Lyon. The operation took place in November 2016 but was not made public until the beginning of February 2017.
The inhabitant of northern France had his 4 limbs amputated in 2010 due to necrosis linked to a serious infection of the blood. He also suffered from partial necrosis of the face which required several reconstructive surgeries, explained the Lyon establishment.
After a long period of rehabilitation, he learns to walk with prostheses but does not tolerate those of the upper limbs. “When you don’t have a hand or a foot, it’s very difficult. With the courage I have, I managed to cope. Six months after my amputation, I was on my feet. But I was missing something, I did everything with my stumps but I missed the touch ”, he told Lyon Mag.
So in 2012, he contacted the surgical team of the Edouard Herriot hospital and the Parc de Lyon clinic to access the transplant.
A risky intervention
Registered on the waiting list, he had to wait 3 years and a compatible donor to be operated. Today, the dad of 3 children says he is “filled” even if he has not yet found the sense of touch, and ensures “to be able to face the future”.
Because this extraordinary intervention involves many risks. The first is of course the rejection of the grafts despite the immunosuppressive treatment to be taken for life. “For Mr. Schryve, the aftermath of the transplant is marked by an infection which prolongs his hospitalization,” said the Lyon establishment, adding that the patient has still started his rehabilitation sessions.
Still hospitalized in Lyon, Jean-Michel Schryve will continue his rehabilitation near his home in Berck (Pas-de-Calais) as soon as he has healed. It should last at least 3 years. In previous patients, physiotherapy allowed them to regain between 34 and 91% of their mobility. The sense of touch is recovered in the year following the intervention.
“I see my hands evolving from week to week” JF Schryve grafted hands to @CHUdeLyon pic.twitter.com/qCJjWc0kvf
– CHU de Lyon (@CHUdeLyon) February 9, 2017
Two decades of hand transplants
This surgery comes 19 years after the first worldwide hand transplant performed at the CHU de Lyon by Prof. Jean-Michel Dubernard. Since 2000, forearm transplants have been carried out as part of a hospital clinical research program (PHRC). The CHU de Lyon could include 7 patients. Mr. Schryve is the last to have benefited from it.
On the strength of the encouraging results obtained in these patients, the Lyon hospital, in collaboration with Parisian teams, obtained the right to launch a new study within the framework of a medico-economic research protocol (PRME). This should be launched in the coming months and will make it possible to offer the transplant to patients who have just had forearm amputations.
Originally, these included patients should never have worn a prosthesis, but the doctors managed to change the research protocol. The objective of this work is to compare the medical and economic impact of prostheses and transplantation.
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