A 30-year-old man from Kochi has become the first in India to undergo a successful double hand transplant.
The breakthrough hand transplant surgery took place around mid-January and lasted for about 16 hours. A team of 20 surgeons from Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) in Kochi, Kerala, attached a pair of hands belonging to a young brain-dead patient on Manu - who lost both his hands in a 2012 train accident.
The donor, a 24-year-old artist named Binoy, was declared brain-dead following a road accident, PTI reported.
The surgery was carried out on 12 and 13 January after Binoy's family came forward to donate his hands. Manu and Binoy shared the same blood group.
Nearly 20 days have passed since the surgery, and Manu - an event manager - is now able to move and use his hands for eating and writing purposes.
"After 14 days post-surgery, both the hands have been accepted by the recipient's body and he started regaining movements," Dr. Subramania Iyer, Professor and Head of the Plastic Surgery Department, told ANI, according to a DNA report. "Manu will be able to move his hands since his own muscles of the forearm are working to move the fingers."
However, it will take another three to four months before Manu completely regains feelings on his new pair of hands. To avoid chances of the hands being rejected by the body, Manu has been put on immunosuppressant drugs.
Hand transplants have been prevalent since 1964 and according to the experts at the Johns Hopkins Medicine in US, the world has witnessed only 85 such surgeries till date.
The first successful double hand transplant in the world was conducted in France on 14 January, 2004.
Doctors at AIMS said that this was the first hand transplant conducted on a coloured skin in the whole world. View Manu's pictures here.
