Eight-year-old Zion Harvey has become the world's youngest recipient of a bilateral hand transplant at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The Owing Mills boy goes down in history as the first-ever pediatric double hand transplant patient.
According to The Telegraph, Harvey, who lost both his hands at the age of two due to a serious infection, said that waking up with new hands was "weird at first, but then good."
"He woke up smiling," reported the publication of led surgeon Dr L. Scott Levin, who currently heads the hand transplant program. "There hasn't been one whimper, one tear, one complaint."
He added, via a press statement: "The success of Penn's first bilateral hand transplant on an adult, performed in 2011, gave us a foundation to adapt the intricate techniques and coordinated plans required to perform this type of complex procedure on a child. CBS News reports that the Levin, who spearheaded the pioneering procedure shared, "CHOP is one of the few places in the world that offer the capabilities necessary to push the limits of medicine to give a child a drastically improved quality of life."
In a procedure that took 11 hours and a support team of 40 doctors, nurses and other staff, RTE reports that surgeons meticulously worked to attach bones and veins followed by tendons, muscles, and nerves once blood flow was achieved.
Since his toddler years, Zion has learned to work with his limbs after both his hands and feet were amputated after he contracted sepsis. Harvey has shared that with his new hands, we looks forward to being able to throw a football with his own hands.
In addition to being an amputee at the age of 2, by age 4 he also underwent a kidney transplant and received the organ from his own mother. "It was no more of a risk than a kidney transplant," quoted The Telegraph of Pattie Ray, Zion's mother. "So I felt like I was willing to take that risk for him, if he wanted it."
Following the procedure, doctors report that Zion will be needing several weeks of physical rehab at the hospital before being able to go home. Further, the hospital will not be charging Harvey's family for costs not included in his medical insurance coverage.
Of the 25 hand transplants that have been done worldwide, Harvey is the first child to have the procedure. The procedure was extremely complex because in order to ensure that the arms grow and lengthen along with Zion, the doctors had to make sure they didn't damage any of the growth plates.
Below is the video created by CHOP featuring Zion's story:
