KOCHI: Two bilateral hand transplants have been performed successfully on two patients at the Amrita Hospital in Kochi. A patient from Karnataka, Amaresh, 25, and another from Iraq, Yousif Hasan Saeed Al Zuwaini, 29 — who lost both their hands due to electric shock -- underwent transplantation with limbs harvested from donors who were victims of fatal road accidents in Kerala. Amaresh and Yousif Hasan were at the hospital recently for reviews. They are doing well now, doctors at the Amrita Hospital said.
Amaresh approached the hand transplant team of the Amrita Hospital in Kochi, and subsequently registered with the Kerala Network for Organ Sharing (KNOS) in September 2018 as an organ recipient awaiting transplantation. A pair of arms was harvested for transplantation from Vinod, 54, who met with a road accident in Kollam and was declared brain dead on January 2022. Vinod’s family readily agreed to donate his organs, including arms. A team led by Dr Subramania Iyer and Dr Mohit Sharma, comprising 20 surgeons and 10 anaesthetists, performed the surgery.
“It was a complicated and rare operation that lasted 18 hours,” said Dr Iyer, head of the Centre for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery with the Amrita Hospital. Only three shoulder-level full-arm transplants have been performed in the world, and this is the first in India, he said.