Assistant Professor Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Harvard Medical School Dept of PM&R Needham, Massachusetts, United States
Objectives The advancement of vascularized composite allotransplantation (VCA) to restore and recreate the appearance, anatomy, and function of the body for people with severe disabling or disfiguring injuries or defects has become a treatment option for a select number of patients. High-quality VCA, referring to donor transplants composed of several kinds of tissue (i.e., skin, muscle, bone)—like a hand, arm, or face— can achieve restoration of tissue defects with improved functional and aesthetic outcomes and allows patients to regain bodily functions, independence, and dignity. Face and hand transplantations are a maturing field of medicine that has demonstrated its value in enhancing the lives of people who have suffered catastrophic injuries to the face and limbs, but there is a great need to develop, standardize, assess, and validate clinical protocols and standard operating procedures, with the goal of ensuring responsible, ethical, scientifically informative, and clinically effective application of face and hand transplantation.
Design A National Academies’ (NASEM) Committee is developing a consensus report to guide the Clinical Organization Network for Standardization of Reconstructive Transplantation, and the larger VCA community, on principles and strategies for the development of protocols and SOPs for face and hand transplantation.
Results This scientific presentation will highlight the conclusions and recommendations from the forthcoming NASEM report, expected to release in February 2025.
Conclusions The report will discuss the eight focus areas of patient inclusion and exclusion criteria, patient education, surgical procedures, immunosuppression and immunoregulation, outcome metrics, quality of life measures, patient reporting (e.g., registry) and the role of interdisciplinary rehabilitation.
