Karnataka man gets India's first full-arm transplant at Kerala hospital

A private hospital carried out a remarkable accomplishment by performing the first shoulder-level full-arm transplant in the country. At the city's Amrita Hospital, patients from Karnataka and Iraq who had both of their hands severed due to electric shock had successful bilateral hand transplants using limbs taken from donors who had died in tragic road accidents in Kerala.

Amaresh, 25, and Yousif Hasan Saeed Al Zuwaini, 29, are two individuals who come from different cultures and countries. "The transplanted hands on Amaresh belonged to Vinod, a 54-year-old man who was working in a gulf country. On a visit to his native place in Kollam district, Kerala, he had a fatal traffic accident when his motorcycle collided with a private bus. Vinod suffered a serious head injury and was admitted to the Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram. Despite the best efforts of doctors, he could not be revived and was declared brain dead on January 4, 2022. Vinod's family readily agreed to donate his various organs, including his hands, following his death," the hospital said in a release.

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Amaresh, patient from Karnataka

Amaresh, an unmarried man, was severely hurt by an electric shock in September 2017 while fixing a charged electric cable. He suffered several fractures and electric burns on his hands. After being brought to the hospital, his hands had to be amputated in order to preserve his life. According to the hospital, the left hand had to be cut at the shoulder while the right hand had to be removed at the elbow.

Amaresh later contacted the Amrita Hospital hand transplant team, and in September 2018 he enrolled as an organ recipient awaiting surgery in the Kerala Network for Organ Sharing (KNOS).

"After a pair of hands were harvested for transplantation from Vinod, Amaresh was rushed to Amrita Hospital on January 5, 2022, where Dr. Subramania Iyer and Dr. Mohit Sharma led a team of 20 surgeons and 10 anesthetists to successfully transplant both the limbs in a marathon surgery," the hospital said.

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Dr Iyer, who is a Professor and Head at the Centre for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Amrita Hospital, said it was a very complicated operation.

"Shoulder-level full-arm transplants are quite rare. In fact, this is only the third such surgery in the world. The higher the level of amputation, the more challenging the hand transplant becomes. There are profound technical issues in a shoulder-level transplant, especially fixing the donated upper limb to the shoulder of the recipient. Amaresh's surgery was successful. There was a problem with the blood supply to the upper limb, which we could solve only with two subsequent procedures. Finally, the patient was discharged three weeks after the surgery," Dr Iyer said.

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Yousif Hasan Saeed Al Zuwaini, patient from Iraq

Yousif Hasan, a father of two girls from Baghdad who works in interior construction, was injured in a wall-drilling accident in 2019. The driller was fatally electrocuted when he accidentally made contact with a hidden high-voltage electric cable. He was taken to the hospital in a hurry, and there, in order to save his life, doctors had to surgically remove both of his hands below the elbow.

"Six months after the accident, Yousif arrived at Amrita Hospital in Kochi to learn more about the hand transplant procedure and in July 2021, registered with the Kerala Organ Sharing Registry called KNOS as an organ recipient waiting for organ transplantation," the hospital said.

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Donars for transplant surgery

AAmbily, a 39-year-old native of Alappuzha, had an accident and was taken to Amrita Hospital, where doctors pronounced her brain dead. Her family quickly consented to organ donation, including the donation of her hands, to help those in need.

Dr. Iyer and Dr.Sharma successfully joined Ambily's hands to Yousif on February 2, 2022, after a 16-hour procedure. According to Dr. Iyer, both hands must be placed at the forearm level. "Some blood vessels were difficult to connect to. This was solved by using grafts. The patient was also discharged three weeks later and is doing fine now,' he said.

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India's first hand transplant surgery

In January 2015, Manu, a 30-year-old male, underwent India's first hand transplant at Amrita Hospital under the direction of the surgical team lead by Dr. Iyer. Since then, a totala of 11 patients have undergone hand transplants at Amrita hospital.

(With inputs from PTI)