Swiss man walks into a Philadelphia hospital and walks out with two hand transplants

When Switzerland’s Luka Krizanac was 12-years-old, he had a case of strep throat that turned deadly. As a result of mismanagement in his treatment, the strep throat turned into a life-threatening sepsis infection. In order to survive, he had to have his legs and hands amputated. Now, 17 years later, Krizanac gets to shake hands with the surgeon and Philadelphian hospital staff that gave him a successful double hand transplant.

"I started hoping for this as a child," Krizanac told CBS News. While Krizanac was able to walk as a child thanks to prosthetics, there were no prosthetics available or sophisticated enough to replace his hands. Now, as an adult, Krizanac is elated at his ability to text on his phone and hold a water bottle.

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"It gives me so much joy to be able to do that completely on my own," Krizanac said. "You need your hands to survive, you need it for the most basic independence in life. Regaining hands after 17 years, I don't think there is a bigger dream than that.”

Getting a hand transplant is incredibly rare, with less than 300 people in the world having received one—much less getting transplants for both hands. One of the multiple reasons why hand transplant surgery is so rare is because of all of the factors required to find a hand transplant donor. The donation doesn’t just need to match the recipient’s blood type, but the donated hand needs to match the recipient’s age, skin color, and size. Nevertheless, Krizanac’s family moved from Switzerland to Philadelphia to be closer to Penn Medicine, a hospital with a highly respected transplant team. After nearly two decades of waiting and searching for a donor, Krizanac was able to not just gain one hand, but two.

"It is still a miracle today to have two hands basically because I did not have that for almost 17 years," said Krizanac.

After the procedure, Krizanac and his family moved back to Zurich, Switzerland, but still flies back over to Philadelphia to follow up with his doctors. Since the transplant, Krizanac has been slowly gain more function and ability with his hands, and is now able to feel hot and cold sensations with them as nerves continue to grow. Krizanac is incredibly grateful to the donor family, saying that they “changed not just my life but my family's life forever.”

Krizanac’s double hand transplant is one of an ever-growing number of landmark organ and limb transplants in recent years. In May of 2023, a surgical team over at NYU Langone Health performed the first ever whole-eye and partial-face transplant on a military veteran who suffered an electrical accident at work. In July 2024, a throat cancer patient regained his ability to speak and swallow food on his own after receiving the very first total larynx transplant.

It's encouraging to see that Krizanac can now grab the world with both hands, and to witness the huge strides in medicine to make organ and limb transplants more achievable. However, none of these medical achievements are possible without a strong pool of potential donors willing to help. If you would like to become an organ donor, you can research to find out how to sign up and register in your state.