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World's first transplant of two full arms: German team
2008-08-01
BERLIN (AFP) - A German medical team said 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 on July 25-26, the clinic at the Technical University in the southern city of Munich said. The amputee, who had lived without arms for six years since the accident, consulted the 40-member team at the university's Rechts der Isar Clinic after two failed attempts to use various artificial prostheses. "The man required round-the-clock assistance -- a condition he wanted to change as quickly as possible," the clinic said in a statement. The facility had 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. It said suppressing the man's immune system so it would not reject the new limbs was a key concern. Another key challenge was finding a donor who matched the patient's sex, age, skin colour, size and blood type.
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