|
|
Change your Life! |
Recipient of world's first transplanted hand in danger of losing it |
|
News
|
May 2, 2000
PERTH, MAY 1 (AP) - Doctors were treating a New Zealand man Monday who was in danger of losing a hand grafted onto his arm 18 months ago in the world's first hand transplant.
Clint Hallam, 49, was being treated at Perth's Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital for rejection of the hand, hospital spokesman Peter Cogan said. Doctors were administering drugs to combat the rejection.
Hallam made international headlines in September 1998 when a team of surgeons in Lyon, France, grafted the hand of a 41-year-old motorcyclist on to his forearm in a 13-hour operation.
In France, Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard, co-head of the transplant team, told RTL and France-Info radio that Hallam had suffered similar problems before but that they had been successfully treated.
Dubernard said he was awaiting more information to decide whether the rejection was reversible.
"In the worst case scenario ... if the arm is rejected or becomes useless, it must be amputated, which would put him in exactly the same state he was in before the surgery."
Hallam was serving a two-year sentence for fraud in New Zealand when he lost his hand in a chain saw accident in prison.
Last year, he said he hoped one day to learn to play the piano and told the Sunday Times newspaper he already was performing simple tasks with the hand such as holding a cup of coffee and swimming.
|