The Cleveland transplant team has said it would perform such transplants only after exhausting all standard procedures, which would include further operations to implant bone and tissue to replace what was lost, and determining whether she could withstand the additional surgery.
This is the first study reporting results from such implants.
Known as a neural bypass, the implant allows Ian Burkhart to swipe a credit card, play the video game, Guitar Hero, and perform actions such as picking up a bottle and pouring the contents, holding a phone to his ear, and stirring a cup.
From June 2004 to June 2006 we performed 15 implants.
From June 2004 to June 2006 we performed 15 implants: 5 monolateral (3 right, 2 left), 5 bilateral implants.
Patient enrolment was constrained by the rarity of performing naltrexone implants in our service, and the difficulty of patient follow-up, problems in which latter problem in particular is notorious in such patient groups.
Dr. Samuels said his team would soon perform its third implant on a pig.
Image-guided percutaneous (through the skin) needle-based surgery has become part of routine clinical practice in performing procedures such as biopsies, injections and therapeutic implants.
If patients were receiving more than one implant, the randomization was performed in such a way that the difference in the number of abutments of each group in the patient was not more than one.
Most importantly, such standardization is also likely to facilitate early identification of poorly performing implants.
