Kochi: A ray of hope for youth after successful hand transplant

KOCHI: A 34-year-old man, who lost both his hands in an electrical accident over a decade ago, has got a new pair of hands in a successful hand transplant surgery at Amrita Hospital here.
Basavanna Gowda was working in a rice mill in Karnataka’s Bellary district when he suffered a high-tension electrical burn injury in 2011. The accident badly damaged his hands, turning them lifeless.Following the accident, he was rushed to a hospital in Bellary and later shifted to Bengaluru, where doctors had to amputate both his arms just below the elbow. After despairing for many years, he finally enrolled with the hand transplantation unit of Amrita Hospital in 2016.
He recently received the hands of Nevis Sajan Mathew, the 25-year-old youth from Kottayam, who was declared brain-dead at a hospital in Kochi on September 25, 2021.
The hand transplant surgery lasted for 14 hours. “The transplants were done in the upper third of the recipient’s forearms. It was a complicated surgery because at this level of limb transplantation, only one-third of the natural length of arm muscles are present in the recipient. We had to bring the rest of the muscles from the limbs of the donor and overlap those over the existing muscles of the recipient’s hands. Even the union of the two bones was complicated as we had to bend the joining plates exactly to the shape of the bones,” said Dr Mohit Sharma, professor and head, centre for plastic & reconstructive surgery, Amrita Hospital.
“The most important thing was to reduce the ischemia time, which is the period between the cold perfusion of the donor hands and their warming up later by restoring the blood supply. This was done by rapidly joining the arteries and veins to restore blood circulation . Later, all the nerves and muscles were repaired, followed by skin closure in the end,” said Dr Sharma. This is the ninth double hand transplant conducted at the hospital since 2015.
“I was devastated after losing both my hands at such a young age. Without my hands, my future looked bleak. After receiving new hands, I feel that I have got a new lease of life,” said the patient.
Dr Subramania Iyer, professor and chairman of the centre for plastic & reconstructive surgery, Amrita Hospital, who led the team of doctors for surgery along with Dr Sharma said that the patient needs to undergo a daily routine of active and passive physiotherapy, including muscle stretching.