Zion now faces a long road of “exhausting” physical therapy but the high spirited eight-year-old is more than determined.
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Zion Harvey, 8, became the recipient of the world’s first double hand transplant performed on a child, following 10 hours of surgery by a 40-person team in early July at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
This story has been corrected to show the boy is from Owings Mills, not Baltimore. To save his life, doctors amputated his arms and legs and he had a liver transplant.
The complicated procedure was carried out at the start of this month by a 40-member team of doctors, nurses and surgeons during a hard 10-hour operation.
“When I get these hands, I will be proud of what hands I get”, Zion said. He could strum a guitar, scroll through his mom’s iPhone, feed himself. Allowing him to make thing, just like normal kids does. And there were some things he couldn’t do, such as climb the monkey bars or throw a football like Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco.
A chronicle of Zion’s journey to and through surgery was documented by The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in the video below.
Zion’s mother said that she felt the surgery was an acceptable risk. Looks like the future is finally looking pretty good for little Zion.
How does Zion feel about the donor? “If we didn’t we weren’t”.
Harvey will have to take medication to stop his body from rejecting the new hands for life.
The boy lost all his limbs years ago to a severe infection.
But Levin is more cautiously optimistic, saying “we don’t know” how much dexterity Zion will ultimately regain. They had to find hands that were the right color and size for Zion. As they waited for a match, they practiced the surgical techniques needed on cadavers and developed a game plan for each step of the surgery.
Dr. Benjamin Chang, the co-director the Hand Transplant Program at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said the surgery was enormously complex and required close coordination from multiple teams.
Surgeons in Philadelphia have performed a miracle transplant operation on and eight-year-old boy to give him a new pair of hands. The surgical team was divided into four working groups, two focused on the donor hands, and two focused on the recipient.
First, doctors connected the forearm bones using steel plates and screws. The surgeons then individually repaired each muscle and tendon before reattaching nerves and closing the surgical site.
Surgeons first painstakingly attached bone, then veins. “That became, instantly, part of Zion’s circulation, no different than my hand or your hand”.
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“His maturity is way beyond his age, as is his insight and sensitivity”, Levin said.
