Penn Hand Transplant Program gets its first dual transplant patient

The bilateral hand transplant performed at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia discussed at a press conference today involved an orchestra of 12 surgeons, three anesthesiologists and 15 nurses in an 11-hour procedure that Dr. L. Scott Levin hopes will eventually become a more common occurrence at the hospital.

The procedure, which belongs to the relatively new field of vascularized composite allotransplantation, was performed in September and is the seventh done in the U.S., but it was only the third bilateral hand transplant performed in the country.

Levin, the director of the Penn Hand Transplant Program and chairman of the department of orthopedic surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine, said he came to Philadelphia three years ago because of opportunity.

“At Duke, I was not able to organize a VCA program as rapidly as I wanted to. I hit obstacles. At Duke, I was section chief [of plastic maxillofacial and oral surgery]. This was an opportunity to be department chair. This was a growth opportunity.”

At Duke University School of Medicine, Levin was a professor of orthopedic and plastic surgery and division chief of the plastic, maxillofacial and oral surgery. He had also established and led the Human Fresh Tissue Laboratory, something he has also done at Penn.

In an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer last year, Levin said: “It’s our goal at Penn to effectively and closely combine the roles of orthopedics, plastic and transplant surgery in the field of composite tissue allotransplantation so we can successfully treat patients [who have lost both hands] and give them back their independence.’

He joined the Duke faculty in 1991 after he received his medical degree from Temple University School of Medicine in 1982, followed by a residency in orthopaedics at Duke and additional residency training in plastic, reconstructive, maxillofacial and oral surgery.

The first hand transplant in the U.S. was done in 1999 and involved connecting bone, blood vessels, nerves, muscles, tendons and skin. A relatively new field, one challenge faced in doing hand transplants is finding donors. The matching criteria for suitable donors for a hand transplant exceeds other organs because candidates need to match skin, ethnicity, size, gender and race.

It’s worth noting that the region of eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware and South Jersey has the highest level of organ donations in the country, according to Richard Hasz, vice president of clinical services for the Gift of Life donor program.