A Louisville surgical team has heralded the second hand transplant in the United States and the ninth in the world as likely to last for a Jackson, Michigan, man who underwent a 13-hour operation over the weekend.

Lead surgeon Dr. Warren Breidenbach told reporters on Saturday that he anticipated a successful result from the complex surgery that used the left hand of a brain-dead donor to replace the hand Jerry Fisher lost in a firecracker accident four years ago.

Breidenbach's team performed the first US hand transplant in January 1999 at Louisville's Jewish Hospital, where the marathon surgery also took place beginning on Friday night.

The first recipient of a US transplant, Matthew Scott, 35, of New Jersey, has not experienced any major problems from the attachment of his new hand, which he is able to use for many functions.

Fisher, 36, a gutter-installation contractor and father of three sons, received the transplanted left hand from an unidentified donor, whose arm was amputated at the elbow.

Surgeons said that the donor must be living when the amputation occurs because blood circulation is essential for the success of the operation, and tissue deteriorates rapidly after death.

Hospital spokespersons said Fisher would have to remain in Jewish Hospital for at least three months under close observation against the possibility of tissue rejection.

They said the estimated $170,000 cost of the procedure was provided by the surgeons free of charge to Fisher, the president of a Michigan motorcycle-riding club.

Many hand surgeons have been cautious about endorsing hand transplants, saying they are highly risky and still in the very experimental stages. Other hand-transplant operations have been performed in the past two years in France, Austria and Italy, with apparently successful results.

(From ChinaDaily)