19-Year-Old Chemical Engineering Student Becomes Asia's First Recipient Of Upper Arm Double Transplant

For 19-year-old Shreya Siddanagowda, life had come crashing down in front of her last year after a road accident.

AIMS

The Chemical Engineering student at Manipal Institute had her both arms amputated at the elbow after her hands got crushed when the bus she was travelling in overturned.

But thanks to medical science, she now has got her two hands back. In the first of its kind surgery, doctors at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in Kerala's Kochi transplanted the upper arms of a brain-dead patient to Shreya.

The donor, 20-year-old Sachin, a B.Com student who was declared brain-dead after suffering fatal head injury in a road accident. His parents had agreed to donate his organs and his hands for transplant.

AIMS

The complicated surgery was performed by 20 doctors led by Dr Subrahmania Iyer, head, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Department, AIMS. It took the team around 13 hours to complete the procedure.

¡°Upper arm transplants are more challenging than those at the wrist or forearm level due to the complexity involved in accurately identifying and connecting various nerves, muscles, tendons and arteries. Only nine such cases have been reported the world," Dr Subrahmania Iyer said.

Doctors said Shreya¡¯s body has accepted the transplanted hands and is showing good signs of recovery.

¡°Shreya is currently undergoing a regime of movements for fingers, wrists and shoulders. We expect that she will regain 85 percent of hand function in the next one-and-a-half years,¡± said Dr Mohit Sharma.

Shreya was also elated to have completed the surgery successfully.

"Hopefully, in the next couple of years, I will lead a near normal life,¡± she said.

This is not the first time the Amrita Institute has performed such complicated surgeries.

BCCL/ File

In May 2015, a former Afghan soldier who lost his hands while defusing mines in Kandahar had successfully undergone a hand transplant in the hospital.