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Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) has made global medical history by successfully performing the world’s first Transhumeral Targeted Sensory Reinnervation (TSR) surgery.
The outcome of the surgery was restoring the sense of touch to a young Kenyan man who lost his arm.
The groundbreaking seven-hour surgery was performed on 22-year-old Moses Mwendwa, who lost his left arm earlier this year due to compartment syndrome following a fall down the stairs.
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The innovative procedure rerouted his remaining nerves to create a “sensory map,” enabling him to perceive touch in his missing limb and significantly improving his ability to control a prosthetic.
“Feeling my hand again is magic,” Moses said, describing the sensation as nothing short of a miracle.
The historic operation was led by Prof. Stanley Nang’ole and Dr. Wabwire, during KNH’s first-ever TSR Camp.
The camp brings together global surgical best practices, advanced nerve rerouting techniques, and a patient-centric approach to prosthetic integration.
TSR has been explored in other parts of the world, but this specific transhumeral application, targeting the upper arm level, is a world first, firmly placing KNH and Kenya at the frontier of global surgical innovation.
The surgery paves the way for improved quality of life for amputees by allowing their brain to interpret touch signals from a prosthetic device, creating a more natural and intuitive limb experience.
Background of Moses incident
Moses’ journey began with a tragic fall on January 12, 2025, during a church service in Nairobi’s Ziwani area, leading to catastrophic damage to his dominant left hand.
After his condition deteriorated, he was diagnosed with compartment syndrome — a life-threatening condition caused by pressure buildup in muscles that cuts off blood supply.
Despite emergency surgeries, including a six-hour debridement on January 19, doctors were forced to amputate his arm on January 24 to save his life.
The psychological toll was immense. “Waking disoriented to find his limb gone,” the report notes, “Moses and his mother endured weeks of grief before beginning rehabilitation.”
But a glimmer of hope came during a clinical review on March 14, when Moses was selected to join KNH’s first-of-its-kind TSR Camp, the first of its kind in Africa.
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Complexity of the procedure
While the news of Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) performing the world’s first Transhumeral Targeted Sensory Reinnervation (TSR) surgery is groundbreaking, what makes this achievement extraordinary is the sheer complexity of the procedure, both medically and technically.
The upper arm (transhumeral level) contains dense and complex networks of motor and sensory nerves, including the median, radial, and ulnar nerves.
Successfully identifying, isolating, and rerouting these nerves without damaging surrounding tissue requires microsurgical precision, often under high magnification.
Restoring sensation is not just about connecting nerves. It’s about retraining the brain to interpret signals from a new area as though they’re coming from the missing limb.
This requires reprogramming the nervous system, a process that is as much neurological as it is surgical.