A former Dresden resident led the charge this week in a historic surgery performed in Toronto, the first of its kind in Canada.
Dr. Steven McCabe led a multi-disciplinary team to the successful completion of the country’s first transplant of the upper limb.
During the procedure, which lasted approximately 14 hours, a team of 18 surgeons attached the forearm and hand matched from a donor to a patient who had been evaluated as a suitable candidate.
The University Health Network stated surgeons used steel plates and screws to join the patient’s arm with the donor limb. The team of surgeons also went through the “delicate process” of attaching the arteries, the blood vessels, the nerves, muscles and skin.
The University Health Network says rehabilitation will start right away to keep the joints from getting stiff.
Reports say McCabe was part of a team in Louisville, Kentucky back in 1999, that performed the world’s first successful hand transplant.
Dr. McCabe is a graduate of Dresden Area Central School and Lambton-Kent Composite School, and still has family in Dresden and across Chatham-Kent.
He graduated from The University of Toronto Medical School in 1980 and trained in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in London, Ontario. Dr. McCabe has been the President of the American Society for Peripheral Nerve and the American Association for Hand Surgery and is now Director of the Hand Program at Toronto Western Hospital.
He is married and has three children.
