NEWS MEDIA ADVISORY: ATTENTION EDITORS, REPORTERS, BROADCASTERS

WHAT: Johns Hopkins Medicine Press Briefing on Double Arm Transplant Featuring the Patient and his Surgeons

WHEN: Tuesday, January 29, 11 a.m.

WHERE: Bunting Family Interfaith Chapel

Sheikh Zayed Tower
The Johns Hopkins Hospital

1800 Orleans St.
Baltimore, Maryland 21287

Parking is available in the Orleans Street Garage, across from the main entrance to the hospital at 1800 Orleans St. Cross the sky bridge to reach the hospital.

Members of the press can participate via telephone by dialing 877-941-1706; international press can call in to 480-293-0629. The conference ID number is 280604. Highlights from the event will be posted on Twitter under the handle @HopkinsMedicine. Photographs and video clips related to the surgery are available for download here: http://bit.ly/JHArmTransplantMediaMaterials

THE STORY: Last month, a surgical team led by Johns Hopkins physicians performed The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s first bilateral arm transplant, together with an innovative treatment to prevent rejection of the new limbs. That treatment entailed an infusion of the deceased donor’s bone marrow cells, and has so far succeeded in both preventing rejection and reducing the need for anti-rejection drugs, which can cause complications such as infection and organ damage.

The patient, Brendan M. Marrocco, a 26-year-old infantryman who lost all four limbs in a 2009 roadside bomb attack in Iraq, will be joined at the briefing by the surgeons who performed the transplants. Marrocco received a transplant of two arms from a deceased donor, becoming one of only seven people in the United States who have undergone successful double hand transplants. His transplants involved the connection of bones, blood vessels, muscles, tendons, nerves and skin on both arms, and was the most extensive and complicated limb transplant procedure so far performed in the United States. Marrocco also agreed to participate in a study of the new anti-rejection regimen, which lead surgeon W.P. Andrew Lee, M.D., hopes to make the new standard of care for limb and face transplants. The study is sponsored by the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine of the U.S. Department of Defense.

WHO:

Patrick L. Basile, M.D., assistant chief of plastic surgery and director of microsurgery, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center

Gerald Brandacher, M.D., scientific director of Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Vascularized Composite Allotransplantation Program

James Higgins, chief of the Curtis National Hand Center at MedStar Union Memorial Hospital

W. P. Andrew Lee, M.D., director of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, and head of the team that performed the transplant

Brendan Marrocco, patient, and members of his family

Jaimie Shores, M.D., clinical director of hand transplantation at The Johns Hopkins Hospital