In the News: Johns Hopkins Hospital Performs Double Arm Transplant on Army Soldier



The world's first complete double arm transplant recipient, Karl Merk, is doing well after surgery. It took a team of 40 surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and other support staff to perform the 15-hour operation . Merk lost his arms just below the shoulder in a combine harvester accident six years ago. Doctors say there is an indication that nerves are growing back but that it could take up to two years for him to relearn how to use his hands.

 by Michael E. Ruane, The Washington Post, Jan 28, 2013

A former U.S. Army soldier who became a quadruple amputee after surviving an explosion in Iraq three years ago has undergone a rare double arm transplant at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, the hospital is expected to announce Tuesday.

Brendan Marrocco, 26, of Staten Island, N.Y., who underwent the marathon surgery last month, was the first service member from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to survive the loss of four limbs, officials have said.

He lost both legs above the knee, his left arm below the elbow, and his right arm above the elbow when the military vehicle he was driving was struck by a bomb on Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009.

He is the first such service member to receive a double arm transplant, and the hospital says he is one of only seven people in the United States who have undergone successful double arm transplants.

The complex operation was performed on Dec. 18.

Later, in a new anti-rejection procedure, he received an infusion of bone marrow, derived from vertebrae harvested from the donor’s lower spine. The infusion allows doctors to reduce the number of powerful anti-rejection drugs they use from three to one.

That is beneficial because the anti-rejection drugs can have harmful side effects, such as infection, organ damage and cancer.

The surgery was done by a special team of transplant experts headed by W.P. Andrew Lee, professor and chairman of the department of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the hospital.
It was the first limb transplant by his newly established group at Hopkins, the hospital says.

“He’s doing well,” Marrocco’s father, Alex, said Monday. “Doing well. It’s been a little over a month now.”

The hospital said it would detail the operation at a news briefing Tuesday.

Lee, in an interview, said there have been about 80 arms transplanted in about 60 patients so far around the world.

There are hundreds of military amputees around the country — four others who have lost four limbs, and still others who have lost three, two or one.

Many, like Marrocco, have been treated at the old Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, now the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda.

Marrocco was there for several years, and two other quadruple amputees still are recovering there.

Most such patients have been fitted with — and mastered — sophisticated mechanical prostheses. But Lee said in a recent interview that research has suggested younger amputees don’t always use them.

“The nonacceptance rate of prosthetics is highest among young people in their 20s and 30s,” he said.

So the possibility of limb transplantation, despite its enormous medical, psychological and logistical complexity, holds great promise for the future, he said.

Lee said results so far have been good, although the arms are never going to return to 100 percent of their former function. But he said patients have learned to tie shoes, use chopsticks and put their hair in a ponytail.

Aside from the physical outcome, “I think it also has additional advantage for the patient to be restored whole,” he said. “Once they’re transplanted, they regard the arm as theirs. And I think they’re more comfortable going out on social occasions, as opposed to wearing a prosthetic.”