A world's first - This 10-year-old US kid with double hand transplant plays baseball flawlessly

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New Delhi: Zion Harvey,10, from United States who underwent a double hand transplant two years ago can now play baseball using both hands.

World's first bilateral hand and forearm transplantation in Harvey that heralded a revolution in transplant medicine, has been declared a success, scientists confirmed in notes that have appeared in the prestigious journal The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health.

In July 2015, surgeons at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) successfully transplanted donor hands and forearms on eight-year-old Harvey who, several years earlier, had undergone amputation of his hands and feet and a kidney transplant following a serious infection.

The surgery lasted 10 hours and 40 minutes. 

Within days of the surgery, the child was able to move his fingers. By six months, Harvey could move the transplanted hand muscles and, soon after, was able to use scissors and crayons.

Prior to the surgery, Harvey had told his doctors that his ambition was to swing a baseball bat one day.

Harvey has now fulfilled his dream of swinging a baseball bat, using both hands.

"Here's the piece of my life that was missing. Now it's here, my life is complete," Harvey was quoted as saying in a BBC report on Wednesday.

Medical tests showed that although his hands came from a donor, his brain has accepted them as his own.

Led by L Scott Levin, Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Penn Medicine and Director of the Hand Transplantation Programme at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), a 40-member multi-disciplinary team of physicians, nurses and other staff participated in the operation.

During the surgery, the hands and forearms from the donor were attached by connecting bone, blood vessels, nerves, muscles, tendons, and skin. 

Double hand transplantation is a complex procedure involving many surgical and non-surgical components. 

First, the potential recipient must undergo extensive medical screenings and evaluations before surgery. 

In this case, the patient's previous medical condition, following sepsis at an early age, factored into the decision to perform the transplant.

(With IANS inputs)