The young woman underwent an intensive surgical procedure to receive the arm transplant from a 20-year-old donor who had died in a bicycle accident. The surgery was successful as her body tolerated her new parts with no problem.
The surprising thing about the case is that the color of the skin of the implants was a few shades darker than his natural skin, since the donor was a tall man with large and thin fingers. But now, his arms and hands became lighter, matching his natural tone.
a second chance
“Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can come together” was the first sentence Shreya Siddanagowder wrote in her notebook a year after her transplant.
Today his handwriting matches her own, but what surprised the doctors most is how the color of Shreya’s arms changed to match the rest of her skin tone.
Siddanagowder underwent Asia’s first intergender arm transplant. The intervention was carried out in the hospital of Medical Sciences (AIMS) and surgeons are investigating whether female hormones could be the key to such changes.
his life changed forever
In September 2016, while traveling from Pune to the Manipal Institute of Technology in Karnataka, India. Shreya was in a bus accident that required the amputation of both limbs. A year later, she visited the Amrita Institute to register for the transplant.
The hospital where the complex surgery was carried out was the only center in Asia that performs such operations. At that time, there were more than 200 amputees on the waiting list.
“The transplant coordinator said it could take months for a donor to come along. We return to our hotel without any hope. An hour later, the hospital called us again to do urgent blood tests,” Shreya recalled in dialogue with the Indian media.
His donor was named Sachin, a 20-year-old who had been declared brain dead a day after being in a bicycle accident. His family had agreed to donate his arms and other organs.
Shreya’s blood type was compatible with the young man’s. On the same day, August 9, 2017, a team of 20 surgeons performed the transplant that took more than 13 hours. The donor’s hand was first joined to bone, then to arteries, veins and muscles before the skin was sewn to the upper limb.
For a year and a half, the young woman stayed in Kochi to undergo intensive physiotherapy. Peripheral nerves were slow to develop. “The hand felt heavy, initially it was bulky,” the young woman said in an interview with The Indian Express.
Believe or burst
One of the first changes Shreya experienced was the weight loss of her arms as the extra fat slowly dissolved to match her slimmer upper limb.
“I don’t know how the transformation happened. But they feel like they’re mine. The color of the skin was very dark after the transplant, not that it was my concern, but now it matches my tone,” a surprised Shreya told AFP.
Another important change to her new body occurred when in the last 3 or 4 months: the girl’s mother noticed that her fingers were getting thinner, a little longer.
Science seeks to explain his case
Dr. Iyer, who treated her, said the color of Siddanagowda’s arms quickly began to show “a lot of changes” but that a scientific explanation is difficult to find.
His colleague Shehla Agarwal claimed that the absence of testosterone explains why the hands became less hairy and commented that other hormonal changes could explain the color change. And also that the donor may have been exposed to more sunlight and physical activity than the woman.
“We all feel very happy for her,” said Dr. Iyer.
Today the painted nails and skin tone allow her to lead a normal social life. In the meantime, he dropped out of engineering and is now pursuing a bachelor’s degree in economics. Currently, he writes his exams on his own, by hand.
Source: Ambito
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