1/4/2006

World’s face and hand transplant surgeons meet

(Louisville, Kentucky) Composite tissue allotransplantation (CTA – multiple tissue transplant) will be presented by world-renowned surgeons and researchers at the Six International Symposium on Composite Tissue Allotransplantation at the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort in Tucson, Arizona on January 17-18. Program discussions on CTA will include the face, hand, larynx, bone, muscle, nerve, tendon, vein and skin.

 The symposium will include 26 physicians and researchers of international reputation representing eight countries.  The surgeons responsible for the world’s first partial face transplant and the 24 hand transplants performed around the world will make presentations at the symposium.  They are: Jean-Michel Dubernard, M.D., Ph.D., Hôpital Edouard Herriot, France; Warren C. Breidenbach, III, M.D., Kleinert Kutz Hand Care Center, USA; and Guoxian Pei, M.D., Ph.D., The First Military Medical University, People’s Republic of China; Frederic Schuind, M.D., Ph.D., Belgium; Marco Lanzetta, San Gerardo Hospital, Italy; Raimund Margreiter, M.D. Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria; and Frederic Schuind, M.D., Ph.D. Hospital Erasme, University Libre de Bruxelles. 

 CTA presentations/discussions will also include Maria Siemionow, M.D, Ph.D., Cleveland Clinic Foundation, the only physician who has received approval in the USA to perform a face transplant, and Marshall Strome M.D., Cleveland Clinic, who performed the world’s first larynx transplant.  Ethical considerations in allotransplantation will also be discussed.  Other integral parts of the symposium will explore clinical research in immunology therapies, rejection, chimerism, tolerance, new drugs and various research animal models.

 The world’s first successful/USA’s first hand transplant recipient will also give his perspective on the innovative experimental procedure he underwent seven years ago. Matthew Scott  received his new hand January 24-25, 1999, when surgeons from the University of Louisville and Kleinert Kutz Hand Care Center performed the 15-hour procedure at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. 

The symposium is being sponsored by the Kleinert Institute, Jewish Hospital and the University of Louisville Institute for Cellular Therapeutics, all located in Louisville, Kentucky.