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Doctors in Germany perform first ever two-arm transplant

A German medical team said on Friday it had performed what it called the world’s first transplant of two full arms, on a farmer who had lost both his limbs in an accident.

The male patient, 54, was “doing well under the circumstances” after the 15-hour operation late last month, a spokeswoman for the clinic at the Technical University in Munich said.

The amputee, who had lived without arms for six years since the accident, consulted the 40-member team at the Rechts der Isar Clinic after two failed attempts to use artificial prostheses.

The head of the transplant team, Christoph Hoehnke, told reporters he was deeply moved as the man’s wife went to his bedside after the operation and instinctively reached for his hands.

“They look just like they used to,” Hoehnke quoted her as saying.

The patient was in good condition, but it could take two years before he “really has feeling in his fingertips again” because the transplanted nerves must still grow, a clinic spokeswoman said.

The facility has a decades-old unit for microsurgery and replantation surgery, with a speciality in interdisciplinary operations it said was essential for a procedure of this complexity.

Professor Hans-Guenther Machens had prepared the transplant since he became the clinic’s director in December.

Doctors said suppressing the man’s immune system so it would not reject the new limbs was a key concern.

The clinic said hand and lower arm transplants were still rare and the Munich operation — which involved attaching an elbow joint as well as an upper arm — posed a greater challenge for the immune and circulatory systems.
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