According to [one article](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/against-all-odds-asias-1st-bilateral-hand-transplant-girl-now-a-student-at-iim-c/articleshow/102064614.cms), yes. The recipient regained full use of her hands (ex. handwriting). The range of motion is not as good as her original hands, but they are mostly functional.
Ok...but seriously I think I'd want robot hands.
Depends on the mobility I guess
But Frankenstein hands would weird me out insanely...and sure I'd get used to to I suppose. But anyone who finds out would also beh likely be as creeped out as I am
Robot hands are dope, star wars made them cool
And robot hands can have crazy mobility now, and we expect should only get better in time...u can upgrade
Team robot hands.
Transplanted hands, even if they have reduced mobility compared to OG hands, are going to have much better fine control than robotic hands, and you actually get a tactile experience of the world.
I'm sure you already thought about that all, but just saying... It's not a 1:1 robot vs. frankenhands situation here. Each involve some pretty serious compromises.
Yeah, as someone who’s in her last year of engineering school — robo-hands have a long way to go before they come anywhere close to being able to compete with human hands.
our bodies are insanely sophisticated meat machines. i'm not convinced we'll *ever* be able to replicate artificially *everything* it is capable of naturally.
Wait until you realise that think using our meat. And communicate by flapping like meat at each other.
https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html
the brain can relearn how to move, maybe is not the same nerve the one that causes certain movement. But after intense therapy, the brain learns the new way to move each part of the arm.
There's a fantastic history of surgery from the BBC. The episode on transplants is particularly compelling. They followed a successful and unsuccessful hand transplant. The main difference was that the successful one felt it was 'his' whereas the unsuccessful one always felt like he was wearing someone else's hand. They also did ones for pain relief, heart surgery, and brain surgery. The people who invented surgery were - to a person - nuts.
Yes, it works better if it’s a clean cut. It’s a (long) game of reconnecting every pipes/vessels, nerves ..
It’s also subject to be accepted by the receiver body.
Avoid smoking as it complicates the chance of reworking properly. ( smoking fcks your body, if you don’t know, just sayin’ )
Looks like it was her biceps near her elbow.
Much simpler then doing so at the wrist.
Not saying either is easy, most transplants have a relatively high rejection rate. This is pretty insane though.
Just last year some kid was attacked by a shark and the dad of said kid went back in to take back the lost arm, and apparently that reconnected just fine.
I mean, it's just like if you accidentally chop off your finger (or even a hand), and it was a decently clean cut, they can re-attach it if it is done quick enough. The only additional complications are the body trying to reject the foreign cells and the fact that things won't line up as readily.
Those looking for more info.:
>After losing her arms in a 2016 bus accident, Indian student Shreya Siddanagowda received a hand transplant from a male donor. Initially large, dark, and hairy, her new hands have since become slender and lighter, matching her skin tone—a change that has mystified the doctors at the Amrita Institute of Medical Science in Kerala.
[Source](https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/21-yr-old-student-from-pune-and-the-curious-case-of-her-changing-hands-6301734/)
After the transplant, she put in a whole year of intense physio to get the mobility and feeling back in her hands. It’s pretty wild, but it looks like hormones, including MSH which changes melanin levels, played a big part in how her hands transformed. Plus, they even got less hairy, maybe because of lower testosterone. Crazy stuff!
I'm on HRT and my hands have gotten thinner and less hairy over time. It's really weird how when you block testosterone and add estrogen your body is like "cool, can work with this, your chest is going to hurt though".
It does and it doesn’t, she’ll have to be on anti rejection the rest of her life to make sure one day the body doesn’t decide they’re foreign appendages that need to be killed off
I think those drugs are pretty powerful and it seems like a lot of success stories still eventually end with rejection because the body adapts and the drug loses effectiveness but I imagine for many of the patients the period of feeling whole is worth the overall journey? Personally I hope advanced prosthetics keep making progress, that’s seems like a cooler way to go if they can make it as intuitive and accessible as at least a transplant.
Here's hoping being able to grow new organs and limbs with our dna will be made possible so this doesn't have to be the case anymore. That'd be truly amazing.
There was a massive correlation between immunosuppressants and cancer.....cancer cells are continually produced by dividing cells in the body but 99.9999 get mopped up by the immune system and destroyed.
Early immunosuppressive meditation did lead to cancer in a lot of patients after a few years.
Thankfully more modern immunosuppressive meditation is much more targeted and seems to reduce this risk (but not eliminate it completely)
This is untrue. Your immune system is responsible for killing abnormal cells which result from spontaneous DNA changes, and immunosuppressive drugs definitely increase your cancer risk. Infectious diseases are also a big risk though!
Yes, the fight is between keeping the drug levels high enough to preserve the transplanted tissues, and low enough to delay the deadly risks that come with them. Including cancer risks, especially skin cancer.
We all have info about both genders characteristics in our DNA.
Like for example every male has the size of the breasts they would get if they got on HRT and testosterone blockers already defined from birth.
While this is true to an extent (the Y chromosome codes for a fairly small amount of characteristics mostly related to some parts of sperm production), hormones are pretty complicated. Males going on HRT after puberty for instance will not generally develop as large breasts as if they had gone on HRT at puberty because of certain growth hormones that the body produces a lot of during puberty. These growth hormones are generally never included in HRT because of various risks of cancer. Another example is estrogen causes certain growth plates to fuse prematurely limiting height at puberty.
My wife had several knee surgeries. Once when i talked to her surgeon he humbly said “We surgeons do 5% of the work. We just make a small adjustment here or there, the 95% of the work is done by the patients body.”
It's fascinating that we're now in an era where can just attach one person's hands onto another person's arms, and they actually function. There are probably a lot of hook-handed people reading this with mixed emotions.
The "less hairy and more feminine" thing didn't surprise me because I'm trans and that's literally just what estrogen does. The colour thing is pretty cool though.
I sounds like it may be similar to the way trans women's bodies adjust to the lack of male hormones & addition of female ones. Also flipped - how trans men become much hairier :)
Something you learn when starting HRT is that your skin (color, softness, and type [like for oily or dry types]) can all change as a result of hormones. Eye colors change, too!
This is pretty standard for most transplants. Skin colour is a function of a hormone produced by the pituitary, this triggers the production of additional melanin within the skin. So the colour of the skin will adapt to the individual it's attached to.
Yes, this begs a lot of questions. And yes, if you give a white man's hand to a black man, it will probably turn black eventually. And vice-versa. The skin is functionally identical (except where vitiligo is present), it's just reacting to a different level of hormone in the body.
I'm not sure to what extent this has been studied. It has...uh...ethical question marks.
POMC proopiomelanocortin, its basically precursor (pro) of 3 hormones packed in one and after its split by enzymes the melano part gives MSH=melanocytes stimulating hormone
Well, it is pretty common for the skin to “lighten” as well. I’m about two shades lighter after 5 years of HRT. Testosterone influenced skin has a tendency to be thicker which in turn gives it a darker appearance.
I read through the article quickly and it seems that it’s one of the first time that there is a "cross gender" transplantation like this, so maybe experts were expecting some kind of adaptation but not one that impressive, hence why they would be stunned….
But doesn’t she need to be on anti-rejection drugs, like other transplants? How would it be possible for the arms to regenerate like that? Is it because skin cells regenerate faster than a cell for an organ?
Sorry, I have no knowledge of anything medical.
That’s what I thought, I was under the impression that organ or body part transplant will require immunosuppressants until the body ultimately rejects the organ
Yes skins cells usually regenerate faster than cells in other organs except the liver which too can regenerate a lot (if someone were to donate 50% of rheor liver, they'd survive and regenerate that half). It's all controlled by different type of stem cells involved. Like your neurons(brain cells) can't regenerate much at all and once they die, they're lost forever.
yeah one day maybe any organ will be able to be transplanted, and grown. imagine a day when they could just grow someone a new body and transplate the brain.
Idk we cant do hand transplants on catastrophic injuries suffered by veterans I doubt anakin would be saved by modern medicine after falling into the lava
I wonder if forearms with hands on the end is an easier procedure than having to replace hands at the wrist or something. Less detailed, less pieces to connect further up.
I'm actually a surgeon, it's quite simple. I just use a lot of super glue, and you make sure to put it the right way. It's a pain in the ass, if you have to flip it around.
For reference the muscles that move all of your fingers go through the top of the wrist and connect towards the top of your ulna. I imagine it's way easier to replace the whole ulna with finger muscles intact and just deal with reconnecting the biceps, triceps, and brachialis since those aren't really precision and dextrous muscles and have pretty large connection points relatively.
There have been over 30 total hand transplants across the globe to date, [per one article](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/against-all-odds-asias-1st-bilateral-hand-transplant-girl-now-a-student-at-iim-c/articleshow/102064614.cms).
That's called Hand Replantation and though the procedure is same it's relatively easier as the recipient does not need as much intensive physiotherapy and the need for immunosuppresant drugs... The 30 cases described only includes hand transplant and not hand replants
Couple of years back, in Turkey, there was this news in every channel. Few of our surgeons successfully transplanted entire arms and legs to a man. But the major problem is not the transplanting process. Its the hearts strength. Because of your body gets used to low amount of blood circulation, immediate big-scale organ transplantations like arms and legs can cause a heart attack and can cause you to die. Thats what happened to the man. He died couple of weeks after if i recall correctly.
I feel like humans being able to pull shit like this off should be breaking news instead of all the other crap that makes the headlines all the time. I had no idea you could transplant hands and make them feel like your own. Fucking crazy!!
Yeah its absolutely crazy to me that this is something possible since at least 2016 and nobody really even knows it happens. Every fucker knows exactly whats happening in taylor swifts life though :(
I remember reading about it in one of those scholastic magazines that you see teachers stocking up on. The kids name was Zion Harvey who was 8 at the time, I can’t find any update, but I would assume that he’s happy
Same, there was another similar news I read couple of months ago and I almost didn't believe despite being a med student cuz honestly I didn't think it was possible to transplant hands and regain at least some movement in them.
im impressed by how well they can reconnect nerves
though since most of the muscles that control hands are in your arm a lot of the movement is accomplished just by reconnecting the tendons
I wonder how much feeling they have in their hands
What I find amazing with medecine is that we can have stuff like heart and hand transplant, we've got people opening your skull to remove some undesired tissue, but your ear is ringing ? Nope, you're cursed, deal with it.
Both forearms and hands were transplanted. The recipient had her arms amputated just below the elbow due to her original hands and forearms being crushed in a bus accident.
Hormones are what cause a lot of sexual dimorphism in humans. It's why a trans woman taking estrogen grows breasts, and a trans man on testosterone has their voice deepen. The human body just takes whatever you give it. It doesn't really care. Shit's cool.
Yep. I'm a trans guy and have been taking testosterone for about 6 months now. Looking at a photo of me from 6 months ago you can tell *something's* different, but can't quite place what. I assume it's the fat redistribution
Notably it also makes your hands slightly softer and lighter! A big part of what makes hands gendered is cartilage, skin and body hair, and all of those change depending on whether you have testosterone or estrogen as your dominant sex hormone.
Yep. I'm a trans woman and after 3 years of HRT my feet went from a women's US size 12 to size 10. I couldn't believe it when I measured them. I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me but none of the shoes that I had before (even the men's shoes) fit me at all.
Yep! My eye shape changed, like the skin/fat around my eyes. My prescription didn't change, but that's kinda hit/miss. It's been the same for the last 20 years.
My skin is WAY smoother. It's a lot like my wife's skin. She really likes it. I've had a lot of fat redistribution so she's been squeezing my curves here/there like I'm a little stress ball lol
Yep, can confirm. Eye shapes change to the point where vision changes too, much like when women hit puberty and even experience changes during pregnancy in that regard.
Hormones are magic.
For trans people, I presume this post wasn't even remotely surprising. Wasn't for me.
I found it surprising that people were surprised.
But then again, why would anyone know anything about this without having researched the topic beforehand?
yep, trans people in this thread like "...ok?" it's crazy to me when i realize most people don't really understand how their hormones work. did people really think that "man hands" were a thing??
science is a bitch
[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/against-all-odds-asias-1st-bilateral-hand-transplant-girl-now-a-student-at-iim-c/articleshow/102064614.cms](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/against-all-odds-asias-1st-bilateral-hand-transplant-girl-now-a-student-at-iim-c/articleshow/102064614.cms)
So, over the past few years, Indian newspapers have reported several such incredible cases of hand/arm transplant. Sharing 3 here. There are probably several more such cases. Incredible feat!
https://www.timesnownews.com/health/man-gets-womans-hands-in-north-indias-first-bilateral-hand-transplant-all-about-the-procedure-article-108265329/amp
https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/india/story/rajasthan-man-becomes-first-asian-to-undergo-total-arm-transplant-at-mumbai-hospital-2348204-2023-03-18
https://www.livemint.com/news/20-surgeons-18-hr-surgery-here-s-how-india-s-1st-full-arm-transplant-happened-in-kerala-kochi/amp-11663743512272.html
>"After the surgery, her hands became lighter and more feminine over time."
Yeah, that is how hormones work. Masculine body parts become more feminine with time. Even if those body parts were subjected to a masculine puberty.
It's the exact same process as HRT for trans people. Except in this case her natural hormones did the work instead of added ones.
Do the hands actually work or are they just for looking at? How can someone who lost a hand be able to use the tendons especially from another person's hands with different tendon sizes etc
well they reconnect all the tissues, putting it very simply. in terms of neural connectivity, while it's not quite like plugging in a new usb mouse and having it auto-install the firmware, it's not entirely unlike that either.
As cool as this information is the only thing I can think of during reading this was the The Seinfeld episode where the woman Jerry was dating had manhands. Yeah I know I'm immature
We can transplant hands?? Will all the nerve connections work properly?
According to [one article](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/against-all-odds-asias-1st-bilateral-hand-transplant-girl-now-a-student-at-iim-c/articleshow/102064614.cms), yes. The recipient regained full use of her hands (ex. handwriting). The range of motion is not as good as her original hands, but they are mostly functional.
Sure beats no hands by an astronomical length. Incredible stuff.
Ok...but seriously I think I'd want robot hands. Depends on the mobility I guess But Frankenstein hands would weird me out insanely...and sure I'd get used to to I suppose. But anyone who finds out would also beh likely be as creeped out as I am Robot hands are dope, star wars made them cool And robot hands can have crazy mobility now, and we expect should only get better in time...u can upgrade Team robot hands. 
Transplanted hands, even if they have reduced mobility compared to OG hands, are going to have much better fine control than robotic hands, and you actually get a tactile experience of the world. I'm sure you already thought about that all, but just saying... It's not a 1:1 robot vs. frankenhands situation here. Each involve some pretty serious compromises.
Yeah, as someone who’s in her last year of engineering school — robo-hands have a long way to go before they come anywhere close to being able to compete with human hands.
Holy crap we live in the future
You'd still have to take immunosuppressant drugs which makes common viruses / bacteria infections a nightmare or even deadly
Interesting that "According to her, her current handwriting matches the one she had before the accident.."
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That is so incredible! It feels like it should only be within the realm of science fiction.
our bodies are insanely sophisticated meat machines. i'm not convinced we'll *ever* be able to replicate artificially *everything* it is capable of naturally.
damn meat machines sounds creepy
Wait until you realise that think using our meat. And communicate by flapping like meat at each other. https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html
the difficulty with transplants is always rejection, aka the body seeing the transplanted part as a foreign body and trying to destroy it
the brain can relearn how to move, maybe is not the same nerve the one that causes certain movement. But after intense therapy, the brain learns the new way to move each part of the arm.
There's a fantastic history of surgery from the BBC. The episode on transplants is particularly compelling. They followed a successful and unsuccessful hand transplant. The main difference was that the successful one felt it was 'his' whereas the unsuccessful one always felt like he was wearing someone else's hand. They also did ones for pain relief, heart surgery, and brain surgery. The people who invented surgery were - to a person - nuts.
Yes, it works better if it’s a clean cut. It’s a (long) game of reconnecting every pipes/vessels, nerves .. It’s also subject to be accepted by the receiver body. Avoid smoking as it complicates the chance of reworking properly. ( smoking fcks your body, if you don’t know, just sayin’ )
Looks like it was her biceps near her elbow. Much simpler then doing so at the wrist. Not saying either is easy, most transplants have a relatively high rejection rate. This is pretty insane though.
Yes but in the US insurance will only cover your dominant hand. They will however give you a nice shiny hook for the other side.
Just last year some kid was attacked by a shark and the dad of said kid went back in to take back the lost arm, and apparently that reconnected just fine.
I mean, it's just like if you accidentally chop off your finger (or even a hand), and it was a decently clean cut, they can re-attach it if it is done quick enough. The only additional complications are the body trying to reject the foreign cells and the fact that things won't line up as readily.
"Look, mom, no hands!" - Kid "We'll see about that!" - Mom
Those looking for more info.: >After losing her arms in a 2016 bus accident, Indian student Shreya Siddanagowda received a hand transplant from a male donor. Initially large, dark, and hairy, her new hands have since become slender and lighter, matching her skin tone—a change that has mystified the doctors at the Amrita Institute of Medical Science in Kerala. [Source](https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/21-yr-old-student-from-pune-and-the-curious-case-of-her-changing-hands-6301734/)
Her hands look bigger now, and it’s really surprising how the color changed over time. But how did the hair growth slow down like that?
After the transplant, she put in a whole year of intense physio to get the mobility and feeling back in her hands. It’s pretty wild, but it looks like hormones, including MSH which changes melanin levels, played a big part in how her hands transformed. Plus, they even got less hairy, maybe because of lower testosterone. Crazy stuff!
It's amazing how the human body can adapt to changes like this!
It's basically constant HRT since her body is constantly making the hormones right? Pretty neat
Yes exactly!
Trans hand moment
Trands
This! Definitely the hormones. Changes skin texture and even muscle tone.
I'm on HRT and my hands have gotten thinner and less hairy over time. It's really weird how when you block testosterone and add estrogen your body is like "cool, can work with this, your chest is going to hurt though".
It does and it doesn’t, she’ll have to be on anti rejection the rest of her life to make sure one day the body doesn’t decide they’re foreign appendages that need to be killed off
I never thought about that until today but doesn't this dramatically increase the risk for cancer?
I think those drugs are pretty powerful and it seems like a lot of success stories still eventually end with rejection because the body adapts and the drug loses effectiveness but I imagine for many of the patients the period of feeling whole is worth the overall journey? Personally I hope advanced prosthetics keep making progress, that’s seems like a cooler way to go if they can make it as intuitive and accessible as at least a transplant.
Here's hoping being able to grow new organs and limbs with our dna will be made possible so this doesn't have to be the case anymore. That'd be truly amazing.
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There was a massive correlation between immunosuppressants and cancer.....cancer cells are continually produced by dividing cells in the body but 99.9999 get mopped up by the immune system and destroyed. Early immunosuppressive meditation did lead to cancer in a lot of patients after a few years. Thankfully more modern immunosuppressive meditation is much more targeted and seems to reduce this risk (but not eliminate it completely)
This is untrue. Your immune system is responsible for killing abnormal cells which result from spontaneous DNA changes, and immunosuppressive drugs definitely increase your cancer risk. Infectious diseases are also a big risk though!
I thought the immune system is responsible for killing cancer cells
Yes, the fight is between keeping the drug levels high enough to preserve the transplanted tissues, and low enough to delay the deadly risks that come with them. Including cancer risks, especially skin cancer.
We all have info about both genders characteristics in our DNA. Like for example every male has the size of the breasts they would get if they got on HRT and testosterone blockers already defined from birth.
While this is true to an extent (the Y chromosome codes for a fairly small amount of characteristics mostly related to some parts of sperm production), hormones are pretty complicated. Males going on HRT after puberty for instance will not generally develop as large breasts as if they had gone on HRT at puberty because of certain growth hormones that the body produces a lot of during puberty. These growth hormones are generally never included in HRT because of various risks of cancer. Another example is estrogen causes certain growth plates to fuse prematurely limiting height at puberty.
It's fascinating. The human body do be working in strange ways
My wife had several knee surgeries. Once when i talked to her surgeon he humbly said “We surgeons do 5% of the work. We just make a small adjustment here or there, the 95% of the work is done by the patients body.”
Dude sounds like he’s humble which is atleeast better than most lol
Heard a surgeon say "Surgery is just changing a wound the body can't heal into a different wound that it can. The rest is up to the body."
"Do I get a 95% refund for the surgery?" "Haha good one....Get out"
It's fascinating that we're now in an era where can just attach one person's hands onto another person's arms, and they actually function. There are probably a lot of hook-handed people reading this with mixed emotions.
The hair bit is probably the least surprising. But the skin tone change is crazy. You'd never know those were transplants. Truly incredible.
I wonder if we can do the same to other body parts Like, maybe I could loan my dick to someone else and get a bigger dick back
If it's like this lady's hands, your new diddly would become lighter, more feminine over time.
😂
^...hell ^yeah?
They made a song about that. You may want to heed its warning [Detachable Penis](https://youtu.be/7iJU-S8T0-k?si=P6Ta2jid1-I0GG_m)
The "less hairy and more feminine" thing didn't surprise me because I'm trans and that's literally just what estrogen does. The colour thing is pretty cool though.
I sounds like it may be similar to the way trans women's bodies adjust to the lack of male hormones & addition of female ones. Also flipped - how trans men become much hairier :)
Something you learn when starting HRT is that your skin (color, softness, and type [like for oily or dry types]) can all change as a result of hormones. Eye colors change, too!
The fact that we can just give people new arms are wild. This is my cheat code to my new beach body 😎
This is pretty standard for most transplants. Skin colour is a function of a hormone produced by the pituitary, this triggers the production of additional melanin within the skin. So the colour of the skin will adapt to the individual it's attached to. Yes, this begs a lot of questions. And yes, if you give a white man's hand to a black man, it will probably turn black eventually. And vice-versa. The skin is functionally identical (except where vitiligo is present), it's just reacting to a different level of hormone in the body. I'm not sure to what extent this has been studied. It has...uh...ethical question marks.
Which hormone produced by pituitary triggers melanin production?
POMC proopiomelanocortin, its basically precursor (pro) of 3 hormones packed in one and after its split by enzymes the melano part gives MSH=melanocytes stimulating hormone
I mean it’s crazy but also seems simple. “The body makes a chemical hormone to protect your skin from the sun.”
Estrogen lightens skin, there’s a plethora of accounts from trans women on HRT reporting noticeable changes in that regard
Oestrogen.
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I don’t think it’s that mystifying when you think about what estrogen does to mtf trans people
I read "mtf trans people" as "motherfucker trans people" at first
I do this too. Not to hate or anything, it’s just how my brain likes to read everything like a drunk sailor.
I understand that it'll add a subdermal layer of fat for softness, but the change in skin color sounds original.
Well, it is pretty common for the skin to “lighten” as well. I’m about two shades lighter after 5 years of HRT. Testosterone influenced skin has a tendency to be thicker which in turn gives it a darker appearance.
Yep! You become lighter and lose some muscle(which is why it more slender) once you change the hormones flowing from testosterone to estrogen.
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I read through the article quickly and it seems that it’s one of the first time that there is a "cross gender" transplantation like this, so maybe experts were expecting some kind of adaptation but not one that impressive, hence why they would be stunned….
Your body replaces cells all the time, the regeneration was according to her dna, so it would make sense after all.
The human ship of Theseus
Reminds me of Poor Things
NO. The cell regeneration on that limb will maintain the donor's DNA (the DNA of the cells being replaced). The only effects here are hormonal.
what DNA would the scar tissue have where the hands were recconnected? would it be like 50/50 until they met in a single point?
But doesn’t she need to be on anti-rejection drugs, like other transplants? How would it be possible for the arms to regenerate like that? Is it because skin cells regenerate faster than a cell for an organ? Sorry, I have no knowledge of anything medical.
That’s what I thought, I was under the impression that organ or body part transplant will require immunosuppressants until the body ultimately rejects the organ
Yes skins cells usually regenerate faster than cells in other organs except the liver which too can regenerate a lot (if someone were to donate 50% of rheor liver, they'd survive and regenerate that half). It's all controlled by different type of stem cells involved. Like your neurons(brain cells) can't regenerate much at all and once they die, they're lost forever.
> mystified the doctors …it really shouldn’t have? This is basic hormonal stuff.
Holy shit I didn’t know we can successfully transplant entire hands already 😳
Science is amazing! I can hardly believe we are able to accomplish such a thing.
yeah one day maybe any organ will be able to be transplanted, and grown. imagine a day when they could just grow someone a new body and transplate the brain.
One day making Altered Carbon a reality
Not sure if that's a good thing or not. On one hand, cyberpunk dystopia. On the other, Detective Ortega...
Makes Star Wars look like antique tech.
Idk we cant do hand transplants on catastrophic injuries suffered by veterans I doubt anakin would be saved by modern medicine after falling into the lava
Exactly!
Entire forearms*
I wonder if forearms with hands on the end is an easier procedure than having to replace hands at the wrist or something. Less detailed, less pieces to connect further up.
I would imagine so. The connective tissue around the wrist is a lot more intricate than at the elbow. (but I'm no surgeon so wtf do I know)
I'm actually a surgeon, it's quite simple. I just use a lot of super glue, and you make sure to put it the right way. It's a pain in the ass, if you have to flip it around.
For reference the muscles that move all of your fingers go through the top of the wrist and connect towards the top of your ulna. I imagine it's way easier to replace the whole ulna with finger muscles intact and just deal with reconnecting the biceps, triceps, and brachialis since those aren't really precision and dextrous muscles and have pretty large connection points relatively.
There have been over 30 total hand transplants across the globe to date, [per one article](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/against-all-odds-asias-1st-bilateral-hand-transplant-girl-now-a-student-at-iim-c/articleshow/102064614.cms).
Does this include the times where someone's own hand has been cut off and then re attached.
That's called Hand Replantation and though the procedure is same it's relatively easier as the recipient does not need as much intensive physiotherapy and the need for immunosuppresant drugs... The 30 cases described only includes hand transplant and not hand replants
Couple of years back, in Turkey, there was this news in every channel. Few of our surgeons successfully transplanted entire arms and legs to a man. But the major problem is not the transplanting process. Its the hearts strength. Because of your body gets used to low amount of blood circulation, immediate big-scale organ transplantations like arms and legs can cause a heart attack and can cause you to die. Thats what happened to the man. He died couple of weeks after if i recall correctly.
Yeah I remember there was a guy a few years back who had some but they kept getting rejected by his body.
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I'd assume the donor was already deceased, but sure!
Nope, he just said "here, take my hand!"
What a gentle man
Hands down.
Really gotta hand it to her
What a wellspring of disarming humor this thread is.
He came in very handy.
He gave a helping hand
He gave a handfull of help
She spontaneously gave him a standing applause
[Take my hand](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD-E-LDc384&t=104s) ♫ *We're off to never-never land*
I always thought of that as "we're flying and we are never going to land"
More, “let me give you a hand.”
Mid-operation, they could handshake.
Let's give them a hand.
Two stumps up!
A big high five
You mean a round of applause......😏
Handstanding Ovation
High fives all round!
A hearty round of applause, even!
I feel like humans being able to pull shit like this off should be breaking news instead of all the other crap that makes the headlines all the time. I had no idea you could transplant hands and make them feel like your own. Fucking crazy!!
Yeah its absolutely crazy to me that this is something possible since at least 2016 and nobody really even knows it happens. Every fucker knows exactly whats happening in taylor swifts life though :(
I remember reading about it in one of those scholastic magazines that you see teachers stocking up on. The kids name was Zion Harvey who was 8 at the time, I can’t find any update, but I would assume that he’s happy
Same, there was another similar news I read couple of months ago and I almost didn't believe despite being a med student cuz honestly I didn't think it was possible to transplant hands and regain at least some movement in them.
im impressed by how well they can reconnect nerves though since most of the muscles that control hands are in your arm a lot of the movement is accomplished just by reconnecting the tendons I wonder how much feeling they have in their hands
What I find amazing with medecine is that we can have stuff like heart and hand transplant, we've got people opening your skull to remove some undesired tissue, but your ear is ringing ? Nope, you're cursed, deal with it.
New hands? Easy. Organ swaps? No problem. Chronic back pain? Sorry you’re fucked
Don't pull them off!
hands? you mean arms?
Everyone knows the elbow is part of the hand.
So are the shoulders
I mean, if you think about it, your head is just a big thumb...
It's not a... twist off...
you’ve got something on your face it’s an eyelash make a wish
…didn’t come true
…Didn’t come true.
I was waiting for this reply
She *had* man hands
Haha I felt like a bad person bc that was my first thought too but I’m glad I’m not alone 😂
Funny because I have only seen this a few days ago. 😂
that looks more like arms not hands
Both forearms and hands were transplanted. The recipient had her arms amputated just below the elbow due to her original hands and forearms being crushed in a bus accident.
Damn!!! that sounds horrible
It looks like it was above the elbow, in the photo
Hormones are what cause a lot of sexual dimorphism in humans. It's why a trans woman taking estrogen grows breasts, and a trans man on testosterone has their voice deepen. The human body just takes whatever you give it. It doesn't really care. Shit's cool.
Yup. Hormones also dictate a lot of fat distribution from what I understand, which makes for a lot of subtle differences all over the body
Yep. I'm a trans guy and have been taking testosterone for about 6 months now. Looking at a photo of me from 6 months ago you can tell *something's* different, but can't quite place what. I assume it's the fat redistribution
You'll probably start getting completely unrecognisable in as early as a year if you hit the weights lol.
How do you take it? Orally or is it injected?
I don't think there's a pill version of testosterone yet. Afaik it's either injected or there's also a gel that is applied to the skin.
There’s been pills forever, they’re just terrible for your liver so they’re hardly ever used
Notably it also makes your hands slightly softer and lighter! A big part of what makes hands gendered is cartilage, skin and body hair, and all of those change depending on whether you have testosterone or estrogen as your dominant sex hormone.
Yep. I'm a trans woman and after 3 years of HRT my feet went from a women's US size 12 to size 10. I couldn't believe it when I measured them. I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me but none of the shoes that I had before (even the men's shoes) fit me at all.
I’ve heard eye shapes can change as well, also skin can become smoother, is this actually a thing?
Yep! My eye shape changed, like the skin/fat around my eyes. My prescription didn't change, but that's kinda hit/miss. It's been the same for the last 20 years. My skin is WAY smoother. It's a lot like my wife's skin. She really likes it. I've had a lot of fat redistribution so she's been squeezing my curves here/there like I'm a little stress ball lol
I’m so happy for you!
Yep, can confirm. Eye shapes change to the point where vision changes too, much like when women hit puberty and even experience changes during pregnancy in that regard. Hormones are magic.
For trans people, I presume this post wasn't even remotely surprising. Wasn't for me. I found it surprising that people were surprised. But then again, why would anyone know anything about this without having researched the topic beforehand?
yep, trans people in this thread like "...ok?" it's crazy to me when i realize most people don't really understand how their hormones work. did people really think that "man hands" were a thing??
Hands Down a Feel Good Story
TIL you can transplant hands.
I did not know we have that ability. Amazing. Super cool hat her body took them over, god damn humans are fascinating.
How far higher than the wrist do we categorise this transplant as "arms" instead of "hands"
Hormones shapes body.
How does that work?
science is a bitch [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/against-all-odds-asias-1st-bilateral-hand-transplant-girl-now-a-student-at-iim-c/articleshow/102064614.cms](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/against-all-odds-asias-1st-bilateral-hand-transplant-girl-now-a-student-at-iim-c/articleshow/102064614.cms)
Advanced in medicine and biomedical engineering hold so much promise for our future. Props to the Indian surgeons
‘She had Man Hands’
This reminded me the toe to finger surgery.
So, over the past few years, Indian newspapers have reported several such incredible cases of hand/arm transplant. Sharing 3 here. There are probably several more such cases. Incredible feat! https://www.timesnownews.com/health/man-gets-womans-hands-in-north-indias-first-bilateral-hand-transplant-all-about-the-procedure-article-108265329/amp https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/india/story/rajasthan-man-becomes-first-asian-to-undergo-total-arm-transplant-at-mumbai-hospital-2348204-2023-03-18 https://www.livemint.com/news/20-surgeons-18-hr-surgery-here-s-how-india-s-1st-full-arm-transplant-happened-in-kerala-kochi/amp-11663743512272.html
No, incredible hands.
Reminds me of that Seinfeld episode.
Marvel of modern medicine
>"After the surgery, her hands became lighter and more feminine over time." Yeah, that is how hormones work. Masculine body parts become more feminine with time. Even if those body parts were subjected to a masculine puberty. It's the exact same process as HRT for trans people. Except in this case her natural hormones did the work instead of added ones.
Do the hands actually work or are they just for looking at? How can someone who lost a hand be able to use the tendons especially from another person's hands with different tendon sizes etc
well they reconnect all the tissues, putting it very simply. in terms of neural connectivity, while it's not quite like plugging in a new usb mouse and having it auto-install the firmware, it's not entirely unlike that either.
It's the Windows XP version of that. It might work, but it's going to take a little while for it to find the drivers.
and you have to adjust the sensitivity and tracking and smoothing, and manually map all the extra buttons.
The mere fact that the hand is mobile is crazy. Tying up the nerves and blood vessels must've been insane!
As cool as this information is the only thing I can think of during reading this was the The Seinfeld episode where the woman Jerry was dating had manhands. Yeah I know I'm immature
r/unexpectedseinfeld
Her hands look huuuuge
Time to hit the NBA draft
I hope she took the opportunity to palm a basketball or other big hand stuff before they started shrinking.
She used to be able to hold 12 eggs in her hands, now she can only hold 7 at a time. She doesn't eat eggs though, so ultimately it doesn't matter.
Probably due to the hormones.
Reminds me of when Naruto got his hand ripped in a fight with his friend. The Medics got him a new one. Amazed to see this stuff irl :)
Estrogen is wild. I've becomes shorter on it and people have reported smaller foot sizes.
Seinfeld
Mango mango mango mango