Dr. L. Scott Levin, a 1973 graduate of Cheltenham High School and a world-renowned surgeon, was featured this month in an article by Penn Today titled “‘The most human gesture’ brings the gift of a hand transplant at Penn Medicine“.
Dr. Levin, chairman of the Department of Orthopedics at Penn Medicine and the director of the Hand Transplant Program at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, gave 28-year-old Luka Krizanac of Switzerland hands of his own for the first time since he lost his arms and legs to major infection at age 12.
The procedure, which took place in fall 2024, became Penn Medicine’s fifth hand transplant recipient and the first surgery of its kind at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania since 2019. According to Penn Today, Dr. Levin’s team has completed the most bilateral transplants in the United States and has become a global leader in the field.
“You do 1,001 activities every day with your hands. Prosthetics cannot simulate or replace that. Our team is very proud of the many things we’ve done as ‘firsts,’” Levin says. “The first child. The first transatlantic vascularized composite allotransplantation. The first in a patient with no lower extremities. The first woman to have hand transplants who later gave birth to a baby.”
Dr. Levin is pictured above examining the hand of his eight-year-old patient Zion Harvey from Baltimore, Maryland. Zion developed a life-threatening infection at the age of two that required amputation of both his hands and his legs below the knee.
His team made world medical history when they performed the first-ever successful double-hand transplant operation on a pediatric patient in 2015.
According to The Times of Israel, the surgery had never even been attempted on a child before and lasted 11 hours. 40 medics assisted Dr. Levin, including 10 attending surgeons who performed various parts of the procedure. Zion, who now uses prosthetics for his feet, is elated that he will be able to eventually swing from the monkey bars, play with an iPad, lift his sister up, grip a football with two hands, and be able to live a more normal life thanks to Dr. Levin and his team at Penn Medicine.
For more on his career, you can read this profile courtesy of The American College of Surgeons.
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Image: Courtesy of Luka Krizanac