This is when Lantieri brought Laura to Penn Medicine to be listed.

“I first met Laura in 2010 at the American Society of Reconstructive Transplantation meeting in Chicago,” said Levin. “She had come to meet with patients from across the world who had received hand and face transplants, and with the doctors who performed them. We had not yet performed our first transplant at Penn, but I was impressed with Laura’s determination; she had her mind set on becoming a bilateral hand transplant recipient. She and I kept in touch through Laurent, and with our first adult bilateral hand transplant a year later, our program was building momentum and would continue to do so.”


Over the past 12 months, the collaborative team worked closely with partners at Gift of Life to list Laura and locate suitable organs for transplantation. She was actively listed for transplantation May 2016 and was transplanted three months later. In August 2016, a team of more than 30 members from three surgical specialties spent eight and a half hours in the operating room for the procedure.

“Over the last five years, and even leading up to our first transplant in 2011, we have been routinely practicing new techniques and honing our skills in Penn’s Human Tissue Lab in an effort the improve, and perfect the procedure,” said Benjamin Chang, MD, associate chief of the division of Plastic Surgery and associate professor of Clinical Surgery in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “We created a method for developing and improving complex surgical procedures with detailed planning, practicing in the Human Tissue Lab, and incorporating feedback for enhancement from the entire team. We repeated the cycle until we felt confident that we were prepared to do Laura's operation. We were able to complete her surgery in eight and a half hours, which is three hours shorter than our first transplant and two hours shorter than our second.”

Vascularized composite allotransplantation (VCA), specifically bilateral hand transplantation, is a complex procedure that involves surgical and non-surgical components. Following extensive medical screenings and evaluations, the potential recipient can be listed to receive a transplant. Once donor organs become available, they are evaluated by the surgical team and are deemed fit for transplant for the specific recipient.

Surgeons from various specialties including orthopaedic, plastic, and transplant surgery perform different segments of the procedure: connecting the radius and ulna; connecting arteries and veins with delicate microvascular surgical techniques; establishing blood flow through what’s called vascular anastomosis; attaching muscles and tendons; repairing multiple nerves the provide sensibility and motor function; and closing the skin.

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