The world’s first child to receive a double hand transplant — a 10-year-old boy from the US — is now able to write, dress and even play baseball, say doctors, declaring the pioneering surgery a success.
Zion Harvey was two-years-old when he had sepsis, a life-threatening infection. Doctors had to removed both his hands at the wrist, and his legs below the knee. His kidneys had also failed.
At the age of four, after two years of dialysis, Harvey had a kidney transplant using a kidney donated by his mother. He was given new hands when he was eight-years-old, and Harvey can now write, feed and dress himself, as well as grip a bat. His brain has accepted the donor hands as his own, doctors said.
“He is able to swing a bat with much more co-ordination, and he can write his name quite clearly,” Sandra Amaral, a member of the team treating Harvey at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia told the BBC. There is evidence that his brain had rewired to take account of his new hands, she said.
