A team of 40 multidisciplined physicians, nurses, and other staff performed plastic and reconstructive surgery on the boy to give him a chance to have hands once again. The team, led by Dr. L. Scott Levin, M.D., FACS, Chairman of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Penn Medicine, Director of the Hand Transplantation Program at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and Professor of Surgery (Division of Plastic Surgery) at the Perelman School of Medicine at The University of Pennsylvania, gathered and prepped the OR with only one goal in mind, to make the dream of an 8-year-old child to swing on monkey bars become a reality.
"I have met with him and his mother several times and you would think an 8-year-old would be overwhelmed or bewildered, or unclear as to the pathway we were setting for him," Levin explained.
"But when I first met him, I said to him, 'Why do you want hands, Zion?' And he said ' 'cause I want to swing on the monkey bars.' That's a pretty logical answer for an 8-year-old. And a pretty profound statement to me," the doctor added.
Zion Harvey lost his hands and feet to a life-threatening infection when he was just two years old. After two years of dialysis, Zion received a new kidney transplant from his mother. Since he was already taking anti-rejection medication for the kidney transplant, his potential as a viable hand transplant recipient had increased.
Before the surgery Zion's mother, Pattie Ray, asked her son if he was excited. Zion answered, "If it messed up, I don't care, because I have my family."
The surgical team operating on Zion was divided into four groups, two groups focused on the donor's limbs, and the remaining two oversaw Zion. The first phase of the surgery was connecting the bones with steel plates and screws, and then connecting the arteries and veins. When they had a successful blood flow, they then connected the muscles, tendons and nerves. The surgery lasted for about ten hours.
"I was nervous and anxious during his surgery," says Ray. "When they told me the surgery was successful, I breathed a big sigh of relief. I could breathe again."
The coverage of the hand transplant before and after the surgical procedure was made available to the public. The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia posted the video on video-sharing sites such as YouTube.
