Robert H. Ivy Society of Plastic Surgeons In the News Read below for Ivy members who have been mentioned May 5, 2009: PA hospital performing nation's first double hand transplant UPMC surgeons were expected to be at work until early this morning performing the nation's first double hand transplant. The recipient is Jeff Kepner, 57, of Augusta, Ga., who lost both hands and both feet to a sepsis infection a decade ago. He went into surgery at 8 a.m. yesterday, his wife Valarie told The Augusta Chronicle, and was expected to be in surgery for up to 20 hours, with two teams working to attach a deceased donor's hands to his arms. Originally from Pennsylvania, Mr. Kepner is a former Air Force member who moved to Georgia several years ago. One evening, after feeling as if he had the flu, Mr. Kepner went to the hospital, and didn't wake up again until three weeks later. He had sepsis, a severe bacterial blood infection, and when he awoke, his arms and feet were already blackened from the illness, and he knew his hands and feet would have to be amputated, according to information compiled by UPMC. Read more here March 23, 2009: The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has become the second facility in the United States to transplant a hand and is about to complete a ground-breaking follow-up step designed to reduce the use of multiple immunosuppressive drugs and their damaging side effects. A UPMC surgical team headed by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, chief of the division of plastic surgery, transplanted the donor hand to a patient who was identified only as a former Marine who was injured in a training accident. The surgery started March 14 and continued into the next day. By Friday, the UPMC patient, the sixth U.S. hand transplant recipient, "had some movement in his fingers" of his new hand, a UPMC spokeswoman said. Read more here February 16, 2009: A multidisciplinary team of surgeons, pediatricians and nurses at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of upmc has successfully separated conjoined twins during a 24-hour procedure. The 2-year-old twin girls -- Dagian and Danielle Lee, of Cleveland -- were separated during a procedure that began at 6:30 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 13, 2008, and ended 24 hours later. The girls currently are recovering well at Children's Hospital. The team that separated Dagian and Danielle was led by Joseph E. Losee, MD, FACS, FAAP, chief of the Division of Pediatric Plastic Surgery at Children's Hospital. Read more here