Quadruple amputee soldier gets double-arm transplant
After 13-hour surgery, two years until full extent of recovery is known
The first U.S. soldier to survive after losing all four limbs in the Iraq war has received a double-arm transplant.
Brendan Marrocco had the operation on Dec. 18 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his father said Monday. The 26-year-old Marrocco was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009.
Those new arms “already move a little,” Marrocco tweeted a month after the operation.
He also received bone marrow from the same dead donor who supplied his new arms. That novel approach is aimed at helping his body accept the new limbs with minimal medication to prevent rejection.
The U.S. military is sponsoring operations such as these to help wounded troops. About 300 have lost arms or hands in the wars.
“He was the first quad amputee to survive” from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there have been four others since then, said Brendan Marrocco’s father, Alex Marrocco. “He was really excited to get new arms.”
The Marroccos want to thank the donor’s family for “making a selfless decision … making a difference in Brendan’s life,” the father said.
Surgeons plan to discuss the transplant at a news conference with the patient Tuesday.
Alex Marrocco said his son does not want to talk with reporters until the news conference, but the younger Marrocco has repeatedly mentioned the transplant on Twitter and posted photos. On Facebook, he describes himself as a “wounded warrior … very wounded.”
“Ohh yeah today has been one month since my surgery and they already move a little,” Brendan Marrocco tweeted Jan. 18.
Responding to a tweet from NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski, he wrote: “dude I can’t tell you how exciting this is for me. I feel like I finally get to start over.”
Brendan Marrocco has been in public many times. During a July 4 visit last year to the Sept. 11 Memorial with other disabled soldiers, he said he had no regrets about his military service.
“I wouldn’t change it in any way. … I feel great. I’m still the same person,” he said.
The 13-hour operation was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Johns Hopkins, and is the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant done in the United States. Lee led three of those earlier operations when he previously worked at the University of Pittsburgh, including the only above-elbow transplant that had been done at the time, in 2010.
Marrocco’s “was the most complicated one” so far, Lee said in an interview Monday. It will take more than a year to know how fully Marrocco will be able to use the new arms, Lee said.
“The maximum speed is an inch a month for nerve regeneration,” he explained. “We’re easily looking at a couple years” until the full extent of recovery is known.
While at Pittsburgh, Lee pioneered the novel immune suppression approach used for Marrocco. The surgeon led hand transplant operations on five patients, giving them marrow from their donors in addition to the new limbs. All five recipients have done well and four have been able to take just one anti-rejection drug instead of combination treatments most transplant patients receive.
Minimizing anti- rejection drugs is important because they have side effects and raise the risk of cancer over the long term.