Hand Transplantation

Hand transplantation is a surgical procedure to transplant a hand from one human to another.The operation is carried out in the following order: bone fixation, tendon repair, artery repair, nerve repair, then vein repair. The operation typically lasts 8 to 12 hours. By comparison, a typical heart transplant operation lasts 6 to 8 hours.The recipient of a hand transplant needs to take immunosuppressive drugs, as the body's natural immune system will try to reject, or destroy, the hand. These drugs cause the recipient to have a weak immune system and suffer severely even from minor infections.