A 48-year-old Australian has been grafted with a new right hand in the world's first such operation by an international team of surgeons in Lyon in south-east France, the hospital announced yesterday.
Mr Clint Hallam (48), a businessman from Perth, Western Australia, had his hand amputated in 1989 after an accident with a saw. He was given a new hand provided by an anonymous donor in a 13 1/2-hour operation that ended shortly before midnight on Wednesday at the Edouard Herriot hospital.
His hand and the lower part of his forearm were grafted after surgery on his arteries, veins, nerves, tendons, muscles and skin after joining the two bones in the forearm.
"The patient and the graft are currently in stable and satisfactory condition," a hospital statement said.
The team of top world micro-surgeons was headed by Dr Jean-Michel Dubernard, the French head of the hospital's transplant surgery service, and an Australian, Dr Earl Owen.
In Sydney, Australia's Nine Network television reported that six other surgeons, including specialists from Britain and Italy, took part.
The Lyon hospital described the operation as representing new "hope for millions of victims of accidents in the work-place and at home, for survivors of wars and of mines, and for those born with congenital malformations".
"It's probably as major a breakthrough as the first heart transplant," Mr Hallam was quoted by television news.
"I don't know what will happen. We can't predict as this is the first time," Dr Owen told Australian television.
Mr Hallam, a father of four, said he was humbled by the historic opportunity.
After his accident, his own hand was reattached, but it had no feeling or movement and he later had it surgically removed. The team, headed by Prof Owen from the Centre for Microsurgery in Sydney and Prof Dubernard from the Lyon hospital, must wait several months before they know whether the nerves in the arm have knitted together.