Woman Undergoes Rare Hand-Transplant, Pictures Show Donor Hand Changes Colour To Match Hers

¡°Sometimes good things fall apart so that better things can fall together."

This is what Shreya Siddanagowder wrote in her notebook a year after her hand transplant. Back in 2016, Shreya was in a bus accident while travelling from her hometown in Pune to her college in Karnataka. The accident resulted in the amputation of both her hands.

Source/iflscience

But she didn't lose hope. A year later, she visited the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) in Kochi, which is known for a series of a successful transplants. According to an Indian Express report, at the time, there were over 200 inquiries by amputees, some from as far as Afghanistan, Malaysia and Bangladesh. Shreya says she met an Afghan national who had been waiting for a donor for a year.

¡°The transplant coordinator said it could take months for a donor to come. We returned to our hotel without any hope. An hour later, the hospital called us back for urgent blood tests,¡± Shreya was quoted saying.

The report states that the doctors found a donor for her on the same day ¡ª August 9, 2017. Sachin, a B.Com student had been declared brain dead that day and his family had agreed to donate his organs including his hands.

And, as Shreya¡¯s blood type was compatible with Sachin, she underwent the double-hand transplant. It took over 13 hours and a team of 20 surgeons and 16 anaesthesia specialists to successfully attach the hands to Shreya¡¯s body.

Before and after surgery/Indian Express

Now, for a year-and-a-half, Shreya underwent intensive physiotherapy in Kochi. ¡°The hand felt heavy, it was bulky initially,¡± she said. However, in the last 3-4 months, Shreya¡¯s mother Suma noticed that her fingers were becoming leaner. ¡°I see her hand every day. The fingers have become like a woman¡¯s, the wrist is smaller. These are remarkable changes,¡± she was quoted saying.

Siddanagowda's hands have reportedly turned lighter to match the rest of her skin tone, The Indian Express newspaper reports. Her doctors remain unsure how this happened since similar cases are few and far between.

Dr Subramania Iyer, head of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Amrita Institute, said that they never anticipated such changes. ¡°This is our first case of male-to-female hand transplant. We can only guess that female hormones have led to the change but assessing the exact cause is difficult,¡± he added.

Fewer than 100 hand transplants have been reported worldwide in the past 25 years and only nine cases where the transplant includes parts of the upper arm, so there¡¯s not a huge wealth of information on the topic. This operation was also from a male-to-female donor transplant, which the surgeons say could further complicate the issue.

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¡°I don¡¯t know how the transformation occurred. But it feels like my own hands now. The skin colour was very dark after the transplant, not that it was ever my concern, but now it matches my tone.¡±

While her finger muscles are yet to function fully, the 21-year-old still leads a normal social life. Meanwhile, she is also pursuing a BA in Economics and writes her exams with her own hand.