Surgeons Amputate First Transplanted Hand

L O N D O N, Feb. 4, 2001 -- Surgeons in Britain have amputated the hand of the

world's first hand transplant patient after he failed to follow the

correct treatment, an Australian microsurgeon said Saturday.

Clint Hallam's transplanted hand was removed at his own requestafter his body rejected it, said the microsurgeon, Earl Owen.

"This was an inevitable thing to happen to Clint Hallam,because … it is now 2 1/2 years that he has kept a hand virtuallywithout immuno-suppression" and without keeping up hisphysiotherapy, Owen said in an interview with British Skytelevision.

Surgeons removed the hand during a short operation Friday nightat an unidentified London hospital, Owen said in a statementreleased earlier to Australian Associated Press.

Owen was among an international team that transplanted the handonto Hallam more than two years ago in a groundbreaking 13-houroperation in France in September 1998.

Hallam, a New Zealander, infuriated his medical team byregularly losing contact with them and refusing to follow essentialdrug treatment.

"We know he voluntarily went without drugs for weeks at a timeover the two years and failed to follow the plan he willinglyagreed to before the actual transplant was performed," Owen saidin the statement.

"This frustrated our attempts to treat him optimally, making itinevitable that irreversible rejection would intervenenecessitating an eventual amputation in the interests of his ownhealth."Patient May Not Have Taken Medication But speaking on Friday night's edition of the BritishBroadcasting Corporation's "Newsnight" current affairs program,Hallam denied he caused the rejection by failing to take hismedication.

"At the time that the rejection started I was under a strictregime," he told the program, which made no mention of Friday'ssurgery. "The doctors were monitoring almost on a daily basis whatmedication I was taking."

He said that he gave up taking the medicine only several monthslater so that his body could recover from a bout of flu. "I'mconvinced that there has come a stage with the number of rejectionsthat I have experienced that my body or my mind has said, 'Enoughis enough."'

Hallam underwent treatment at a West Australian hospital forrejection of the hand last year.

He made international headlines when surgeons grafted the handof a 41-year-old motorcyclist onto his forearm. Hallam lost hisright hand in a chain saw accident while serving a two-year prisonsentence for fraud in New Zealand.

Doctors in Louisville, Ky., have performed a similar operationsince then, and a team led by the French surgeon who attachedHallam's new hand has performed a double arm transplant.

In 1999, Hallam said he hoped one day to learn to play the pianoand said he already was performing simple tasks with the hand suchas holding a cup of coffee and swimming.