July 17th, 2009

Over two months ago surgeons at the UPMC Montefiore Hospital in Pittsburgh preformed a history surgery on Jeff Kepner, a 57 year-old Augusta Georgia resident. Lead surgeon, Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, and team successfully completed a double hand transplant – our nation’s first ever. 

The Pittsburgh Pots-Gazette reports on the current status of the trnasplant recipient:

With deadpan humor, Jeff Kepner, the nation’s first double hand transplant recipient, said that when he was wheeled to the news conference table yesterday, his first thought was: “Where’s my water?”

He was joking about the glasses of water sitting in front of his wife and all the doctors flanking him at UPMC Montefiore Hospital, and the obvious fact that 10 weeks after his historic surgery, he is not quite ready to lift a goblet and drain it.

But he can clench his new hands slightly, and he was happy to demonstrate how he could use that motion to stack plastic cones on top of each other or drop checkers into a game of Connect Four.

It showed that the first part of the transplant to function, as doctors had expected, is the tendons and large muscles connecting Mr. Kepner’s forearms to the hands donated in May by the family of a 23-year-old DuBois, Pa., man.

For the full story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette click here.

………

UPMC lead surgen, Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee and Jeff Kepner were interviewed on NBC’s Today Show on Thursday, July 16, 2009.

For video of the interview, click here.