--- title: Double Hand Transplant: Recipient Wants Them Removed description: Jeff Kepner, the first U.S. man to get a double hand transplant, wants them removed—a prospect that would require many rounds of surgery canonical: https://time.com/4419959/double-hand-transplant-surgery/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-07-25T18:22:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-13T05:33:12.000Z article:section: Health og:title: 'I Can Do Absolutely Nothing.’ American With 2-Hand Transplant Wants Them Removed og:description: Jeff Kepner, the first U.S. man to get a double hand transplant, wants them removed—a prospect that would require many rounds of surgery og:url: https://time.com/4419959/double-hand-transplant-surgery/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta7b8e849b1380a1e/69889f1e656a3fca13bcc718/jeff-kepner.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2592 og:image:height: 1458 og:image:alt: Jeff Kepner og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'I Can Do Absolutely Nothing.’ American With 2-Hand Transplant Wants Them Removed twitter:description: Jeff Kepner, the first U.S. man to get a double hand transplant, wants them removed—a prospect that would require many rounds of surgery twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta7b8e849b1380a1e/69889f1e656a3fca13bcc718/jeff-kepner.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 'I Can Do Absolutely Nothing.’ The First American With a Double Hand Transplant Wants Them Removed > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, twice weekly), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=255cc578-ae8f-4ce7-b4d0-5c928246fa80&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: A Prosthetic Hand That Can Feel [Watch (HLS stream): A Prosthetic Hand That Can Feel](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/oRQrOoA9.m3u8) (5:02)  _Published 2015-11-11. Igor Spetic, 49, lost his right hand in a work related accident five years ago. But on Oct. 9, he got to bring home an innovative prosthetic hand for the first time, one that not only has more precise gripping, but gives him back his sense of touch._ by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Updated: Dec 13, 2023 5:33 AM UTCPublished: Jul 25, 2016 6:22 PM UTC  Jeff Kepner in his home. Jeff Kepner in his home. Valarie Kepner by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Updated: Dec 13, 2023 5:33 AM UTCPublished: Jul 25, 2016 6:22 PM UTC In medicine, someone always has to be first. Seven years ago, that person was Jeff Kepner, now 64, who became the first person to receive a double hand transplant in the United States. The milestone made headlines: “A Touching Tale of a Life Changed,” [read one from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette](http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2009/05/08/A-touching-tale-of-a-life-changed-At-UPMC-Jeff-Kepner-is-accepting-his-new-hands/stories/200905080139). But Kepner’s transplanted hands have never worked, and today they remain completely non-functional. If he could, Kepner says he would have them removed, he tells TIME in an exclusive interview. “From day one I have never been able to use my hands,” he says. “I can do absolutely nothing. I sit in my chair all day and wear my TV out.” Kepner is one of many Americans who have undergone experimental transplant surgeries that do not save their lives, like a heart, but stand to greatly improve them. In the last few years, doctors have performed groundbreaking [face transplants](http://abcnews.go.com/Health/face-transplant-recipient-receives-warm-home-mississippi/story?id=35374573) and the first [uterus](http://time.com/4238596/uterus-transplant-cleveland-clinic/) and [penis transplants](http://time.com/4337071/penis-transplant-how-it-works/) stateside. But Kepner’s story highlights the sacrifice that can come from taking a risk for a better life—and for scientific advancement. In 1999, Kepner, of Augusta, Ga., lost his hands due to sepsis that started from a strep throat infection. He used prosthetics, and while life wasn’t easy, he was able to drive and keep a job—things that are impossible for him today. Ten years after the infection, Kepner underwent a nine-hour surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) to attach hands from a donor. Kepner knew there was a risk that his body could reject the hands or that the surgery wouldn’t be successful, but he had always assumed, and says he was told, that in a worst-case scenario he could have the new hands removed and go back to using prosthetics. He’s since learned that that option isn’t so simple. Dr. Vijay Gorantla, the administrative medical director of the Pittsburgh Reconstructive Transplant Program at UPMC, is overseeing Kepner and tells TIME that full or partial removal of the hands has been discussed, but the procedures are not without risks. According to Gorantla, it’s uncertain if Kepner would be able to use prosthetics if the hands were removed, and that rigorous physical therapy would be required. If the hands were to be only partially amputated, Kepner would need to stay on daily drugs that prevent his body from rejecting the hands, wrote Gorantla in an email, adding that: “We believe that additional, minor surgical procedures—and commitment to more physical therapy—could improve the function of his hands to help him with activities of daily living.” Kepner says that after seven years, he’s tired of surgeries, and will likely keep the non-functioning hands attached to his body. “I am not going through all those operations again,” he says. The surgeon who led the transplant in 2009, Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, is currently at Johns Hopkins where he’s [preparing to perform penis transplants for American veterans](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/07/health/penis-transplants-being-planned-to-heal-troops-hidden-wounds.html). Lee says the need for removal is uncommon and has occurred in six out of 100 similar transplants in the U.S. and Europe. “Mr. Kepner’s transplanted hands do not function as well as those of other hand transplant recipients,” said Lee in an email to TIME. “Our team has performed bilateral hand/arm transplants in four patients to date, including Mr. Kepner. The other three patients have had significant functional return in their hands and have been able to resume completely independent living, including driving, working, and going to school.” “Complex surgery such as hand transplant do not produce uniform results in everyone,” Lee adds, “but we have been encouraged by the functional return in the great majority of our recipients whose lives have been transformed by the procedure.” Kepner says he hasn’t heard from Lee or any of the surgeons involved in the initial operation in years. He says his diminished quality of life has taken a toll. With prosthetics, Kepner says he was 75% functional, but today he says he feels “0%” functional. His wife, Valarie, retired in May to take care of him full-time, and the Kepner family launched a [GoFundMe page](https://www.gofundme.com/3dy2k0) to cover costs they’ve incurred through the years. . Kepner says that in hindsight he would not do the surgery again, but he does not criticize the doctors who did the operation. “That’s the chance you take,” he says, “and that’s the chance I took.” ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] It's, you really can't explain it. It's literally losing a body part. It's not just one finger. It's five fingers. It's losing your palm. Losing the back of your hand. Losing that ability to grasp things. Nearly 5 years ago I suffered a workplace accident which resulted in the loss of my right hand. People have tried to create a hand that looks just like the human hand. I don't think that's the ideal prosthetic. I actually think what want to do is have them forget they lost a hand. [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] A friend of mine contacted me and said that they were doing a sensory restoration project at the Cleveland VA Medical Center, and would I be interested in possibly participating? So the basic goal of this technology is to restore sensation to people that have lost their hand. You've also lost all the sensors that used to touch the world. Even though the sensor is gone the wires that communicate that information back to the brain still exist. And so what we've done is develop devices that can go onto those wires and apply electrical information that basically communicate to the wires that then send that back to the brain. Brain, and so they feel as though it's their hand in what we do. When the prosthesis touches something, the person feels as though they're touching that. If you want to sit though it, we can see- The first time that I felt sensation, the actual sense of my hand being there, was when I shook the hand of Professor Dustin Tyler. What that means to me is getting something back that I lost. And I never knew that would even be possible. To even get one sensation back. But to literally get 20 different sensations back. It's me being almost whole again. When we ask our subjects how do you feel when you're using the prosthesis. If they don't have sensation enabled they describe it as a tool. They'll say basically I'm holding a tool at the end of my arm and I'm manipulating it. As soon as we turn on sensation they say no it's my hand. I'm touching something. That's a huge change. One of the big things that distinguishes our work is that we are, to my knowledge, the first group that's been able to do this for longer than a couple weeks in the lab. And now sending them home we're the first to allow them to go home and to use this on a regular basis and see what the impact will be in their home life. [ CROSSTALK ] the real world is. That's gonna be Going to get a little emotional when I go home. Think so? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I already know it. Oh really? When you're in the lab you focus on sensation and so it's very easy. Well, relatively easy to make these things work but the real challenge is when people go home. We want to see the impact in day to day life. So, we haven't ever had the opportunity to do this before, to send him home and clean the dishes, make the salad, and make sandwiches, hold his wife's hand. And I've only had this system for two days now, so it's still been a learning curve for myself. And learning to be right handed again. But I've been using it more and more. The hardest one so far that I've found is hard boiled eggs. Cuz even though they say they're hard boiled, when the shell is off, they're really soft. And I used to crush them all the time. But now I'm able to hold it and feel them in my fingers. The brain is an amazing device. It's really a great organizer categorizer, right? And that's been great for us, because this idea of natural sensation, I think, relies on that. The view of the brain as it learns our communication So we're trying to get as close as we can to what the natural language of the body is, but that's really hard. There's 10, 000 axons, 10, 000 different signals, we're not there yet. But what's beautiful is we can get close and the brain can do the rest of the work for us. So even though it's not perfect, the person still interprets that information to be a sense of touch. And what's even better is over time the brain will learn our language better and better. [ INAUDIBLE ] I know it's still an ongoing process, so my hopes are that, that someday it can be more functional than anything that's ever been out there. 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