UK’s first double hand transplant
Victim of work accident can’t wait to ride a bike .... and hold his own beer
A KEEN cyclist who lost both hands in a work accident has become the first person in Britain to have a double hand transplant.
Chris King was crippled in the industrial accident three years ago. Now he is looking forward to holding a bottle of beer, doing up his buttons and riding his old bicycle once again.
He also plans to meet Mark Cahill, the first Briton to have a single hand transplant, to shake new hands with him.
Mr King’s operation is the first in an NHS-funded hand transplant programme, which will also treat victims of car crashes and severe infections.
Up to four operations could be carried out a year and four patients are already on the waiting list.
Recovering after the gruelling 12-hour operation, Mr King, 57, said: ‘It’s better than a lottery win because you feel whole again. They’re my hands. They really are my hands. My blood’s going through them. My tendons are attached. I can’t wait to get all [the bandages] off and look at them properly.”
‘It was just like the hands were made-to-measure. They absolutely fit.
‘I want to start using mechaniscrews cal things and start trimming the hedge and do what I used to do and then I’ll be happy.’
Mr King said he can’t wait to swap the Velcro shirts he has had to wear to make dressing easy for ones with buttons. And he is ‘itching’ to go out on a proper cycling trip and can now ditch the bike he had adapted after the accident. He added: ‘A bottle of Timothy Taylor’s – that’s what I can’t wait to get back home for.’
Mr King also paid a tearful tribute to the male donor whose death has changed his life. ‘It’s like somebody putting an arm round you and saying you’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘It’s difficult to say thank you.’
The lighting firm worker lost all his fingers and a large part of both hands in 2013 in a metal pressing machine. He still had both his thumbs and a section of both palms – prompting his fiveyear-old niece to ask him when he would grow some fingers.
His doctors referred him to Leeds General Infirmary, which had performed the country’s first hand transplant on Mr Cahill a year earlier. The former pub landlord encouraged Mr King to have the operation and the two are now good friends.
Mr King, of Rossington, near Doncaster in South Yorkshire, said: ‘We’ll shake hands one day. It’s wonderful stuff.’
The exact date of the £77,000 operation is being kept secret, to protect the identity of the donor, but it occurred during the last ten days.
Some 80 hand transplants have been performed worldwide, but this British operation was made extra-complex because Mr King still had part of his hands.
A team of eight surgeons began by using titanium plates and to attach the bones in Mr King’s hands to those in the donated hands.
They then connected key tendons and muscles, followed by the blood vessels. Once blood was circulating, the remaining nerves, tendons and muscles were attached.
Mr King, who is single, still has his original thumbs but has new fingers. He can already move his new hands and expects the feeling to come back. All in all, the operation appears to have been a complete success.
Months of physiotherapy and occupational therapy lie ahead and he will need lifelong treatment with powerful immunosuppressant drugs to prevent his body rejecting his new hands.
His psychological health will also have been carefully considered to ensure he accepts the change mentally.
New Zealander Clint Hallam, who in 1998 was the first man to receive a new hand by a team of surgeons in France, had it cut off three years later, saying it was unsightly and he felt ‘mentally detached’ from it.
It is hoped Mr King’s story will raise awareness of the scheme and lead to more families agreeing to donations.
Mr King said: ‘There are probably people out there who don’t know about this still. They can have something better. We want as many donors as we can.
‘Even if you don’t have a donor card, just have the conversation with your family.’
‘You feel whole again’