World first hand transplant from living donor performed by Vietnamese surgeon

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Surgeons are examining the man's hand after operation

The operation was performed on January 21 on a patient injured in an industrial accident in 2016, the publication said. Within a month after the operation, a new wrist of the patient's left hand was successfully taken, it said.

The wrist was transplanted from another patient who severely damaged his left elbow in an industrial accident. After three weeks of attempts to save the patient's arm, the doctors decided to amputate it due to worsening gangrene.

However, the patient's wrist was unaffected by the gangrene, so the doctors negotiated with the patient and his family to obtain consent for donation.

The transplant operation lasted 8 hours, the hospital's deputy head and chief surgeon Nguyen The Hoang, who acted as lead surgeon, told the portal.

"Hand transplantation is generally fraught with many difficulties due to the complex structure of the human hand, and in this case, we had to take measures to prevent secondary infection with gangrene, as the donor's arm was infected in the elbow," he said, as quoted by the news portal.

He added that the fact the muscle tissue of the recipient's arm had not been used for almost four years presented a serious challenge./.