First ever hand transplantation conducted in India on 64-year-old with kidney transplant history

64-year-old Gautam Tayal from Delhi who had a kidney transplant ten years ago lost his left hand in a factory around two years ago. In his hand transplant, he received the limb of a 40-year-old man who was declared brain dead in Thane.

In the first ever hand transplant conducted in north India, a 19-year-old and a 64-year-old man expressed their happiness after they got a “second chance” and “new hopes in life".

Amrita Hospital in Haryana's Faridabad, in a significant medical achievement, carried out successful hand transplantation in landmark surgeries lasting around 17 hours each in late December 2023, as per a report in the India Today.

India's first hand transplant surgery was performed successfully at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi, on January 13 2015.

64-year-old Gautam Tayal from Delhi who had a kidney transplant ten years back, lost his left hand in a factory around two years ago. In his hand transplant, he received the limb of a 40-year-old man who was declared brain dead in Thane.

“This is not only North India’s first-ever hand transplantation but also the first one in the country conducted on a kidney transplant patient. This is a very rare and exciting feat in medical science. To achieve union of the two hands, we had to join two bones, two arteries, 25 tendons, and 5 nerves,” Dr Mohit Sharma of the Centre for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Amrita Hospital told the publication.

Tayal is set to be discharged within a week.

In another successful bid of hand transplant, 19-year-old Devansh Gupta, who had lost both his upper limbs and right lower limb above the knee in a train accident, received hands belonging to a 33-year-old man from Surat who had been declared brain dead due to a lung condition.

“The patient’s right limb was transplanted at the upper arm level, and the left limb just above the elbow level. The higher the level of amputation, the more challenging the hand transplant becomes, and there are profound technical issues in the upper arm-level hand transplant,” Dr Anil Murarka told the publication.

Gupta, like Tayal is showing positive signs of recovery.