First pediatric double hand transplant performed on Baltimore boy

A young boy from Baltimore, Maryland is the first child to receive a double hand transplant. The young boy’s name is Zion Harvey and he is just eight years old. He underwent surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia teamed up with Penn Medicine to perform the world’s first every pediatric double hand transplant surgery on Zion.

When Zion Harvey was just two years old, he developed a life-threatening sepsis infection that caused him to have multi-organ failure and eventually have both his hands and his feet amputated. When Zion was four years old and after two years of being on dialysis, he needed a kidney transplant. Fortunately, his mother donated one of her kidneys to Zion. Zion learned to adjust his lifestyle so that he could function with the help of prosthetic legs. The prosthetic legs have helped him get around and be able to do things like walk and run, but he still was living without hands. Now, thanks to the team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn Medicine, Zion no longer has to live without hands.

Zion’s medical team consisted of 40 doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel in plastic and reconstructive surgery, orthopedic surgery, radiology and anesthesiology. The surgery was led by Dr. L. Scott Levin who is the chairman of the department of orthopedic surgery at Penn Medicine; director of the Hand Transplantation Program at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; and professor of surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Levin said the procedure was extremely complicated. He also said that this surgery was possible due to years of training and months of planning and preparation from him and his team.

Hand transplantation is also known as vascularized composite allotransplantation. According to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, it is a very rare procedure that is only performed by a few surgical teams around the world. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia developed their Hand Transplantation Program in 2014 after meeting Zion and determining that he was a candidate for the complex surgery. In order determine whether a person is a candidate for hand transplantation, the team “first conducts an extensive evaluation of every child and family interested in the procedure over the course of several months.

Before placing a child on the waiting list for a hand transplant with the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the risks of surgery and immunosuppression are weighed against the benefits of improved extremity function. For this reason, the team evaluates several factors in every child that is seen, including other medical conditions, level of function with and without prosthetics, level of support from family and caregivers, psychological profile, and ability to cope during the lengthy recovery and rehabilitation process. If the team feels your child fits the criteria, they will begin the process of being listed for transplantation.”

Zion will receive daily immunosuppressant medications which work to prevent his body from rejecting his new hands and kidney. He is expected to spend several more weeks in the rehabilitation unit at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia before he can go home. Afterwards, Dr. Levin and his team will continue to follow Zion initially on a monthly basis and then annually throughout his life.