The Nation : Surgeon Transplants Entire Knee Joint

A University of Pennsylvania surgeon announced that he had successfully transplanted a complete knee joint from a teen-age motorcycle accident victim into a New Jersey woman whose knee had been destroyed by a tumor. The experimental surgery, which experts said has been attempted only a few times, was performed Sept. 30, and the patient, Susan Lazarchick, 32, of Absecon, N.J., is doing well. Dr. Richard Schmidt, 33, an orthopedic cancer specialist who directs the bone bank at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said the urgency of removing the tumor made it impossible to wait weeks for a custom-made artificial joint, and that Lazarchick did not want to have her leg amputated.