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Woman gets new hand in Emory operation
Emory University Hospital has performed its first hand transplant, replacing the left hand of a 21-year-old college student from the Orlando area, the university announced today.
The young woman, Linda Lu, lost her left hand as a child due to an illness.
Fewer than 15 hand transplantations have successfully taken place in the United States, and the surgery at Emory is the only one in the southeastern U.S. apart from those performed in Louisville, home to the nation’s first in 1999.
The surgery on March 12 lasted 19 hours and involved multiple teams of surgeons, nursing and operating room support staff. A hand transplant, unlike a solid organ transplant, involves multiple tissue — skin, muscle, tendon, bone, cartilage, fat, nerves and blood vessels.
Lu is beginning rehabilitation at Emory and will spend the next three months in Atlanta.
This transplant, Emory officials said, has been years in the making, starting with the recruiting of surgeon Dr. Linda Cendales in 2007, and is part of Emory’s effort to establish itself as one of the country’s leading limb transplant centers.
Cendales — who was part of the Louisville team performing that first hand transplant — is establishing the Emory program for limb transplantation.
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