[2] Compliance with immunosuppressive medications and intensive physical therapy after hand transplants is associated with significant success in regaining the function of the new hands/arms.
[8] After the operation, Hallam wasn't comfortable with the idea of his transplanted hand and failed to follow the prescribed post-operative drug and physiotherapy regime.
[11][8] The first hand transplant to achieve prolonged success was directed by a team of Kleinert Kutz Hand Care surgeons including Warren C. Breidenbach, Tsu-Min Tsai, Luis Scheker, Steven McCabe, Amitava Gupta, Russell Shatford, William O'Neill, Martin Favetto and Michael Moskal in cooperation with the Christine M. Kleinert Institute, Jewish Hospital and the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky.
[citation needed] In contrast to the earlier attempts at hand transplantation, the Louisville group had performed extensive basic science research and feasibility studies for many years before their first clinical procedure (for example, Shirbacheh et al., 1998).
[citation needed] In March 2000, a team of surgeons at the University of Innsbruck in Austria began a series of three bilateral hand transplants over six years.
[13] On 14 January 2004, the team of Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard (Edouard-Herriot Hospital, France) declared a five-year-old double hand transplant a success.
[citation needed] On 4 May 2009 Jeff Kepner, a 57-year-old Augusta, Georgia resident underwent the first double hand transplant in the United States at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center by a team led by W.P.
[14] On 18 February 2010, the first female in the United States underwent hand transplantation at Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.
[15] On 22 June 2010, a Polish soldier received two new hands from a female donor, after losing them three years earlier while saving a young recruit from a bomb.
[16][17] On 12 March 2011 Linda Lu became the recipient of a hand transplant, performed at Emory University Hospital,[18] from a donor Leslie Sullivent.
[19] In the fall of 2011, 28-year-old Lindsay Ess received a double hand transplant at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in an 11 1/2 hour surgery.
The recipient's hand was removed during the same 8 hour operation, reportedly allowing very accurate restoration of nerve structures, believed to be an international first.
[citation needed] On 13 January 2015, doctors at the Kochi-based Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre (AIMS) successfully conducted India's first hand transplant.
[29] On June 23, 2015, Koch had the amputation surgery, also performed by Dr. Kodi Azari, which was designed to prep him to receive a transplanted limb.
[37] In 2016, it was announced that NHS patients in England were to become some of the first in the world to benefit from publicly funded pioneering hand and upper arm transplants delivered by a specialist team at Leeds General Infirmary.