The world's first man with two new arms fitted back to his usual routine

The world's first man with two new arms fitted back to his usual routine

Britain's Stephen Gallagher, the world's first person to have both hands transplanted, is reportedly recovering normally. After a few months, he was able to use his hands to do some minor activities. The 48-year-old was diagnosed with scleroderma, a rare disease that led him to seek a new arm transplant. He contracted the disease 13 years ago with an abnormal rash on his skin.

This causes the destruction of the infected person's own and internal organs. According to Steven, the infection affected his nose, mouth and hands. About seven months later, his fingers began to grind, causing him severe pain. The expert recommended that he have a new hand transplant to avoid this situation. But Stephen, a father of three, did not like it, and eventually risked it and agreed. "My wife and I talked about this and came to the final decision. I lost both my hands anyway, so I liked what the doctors said." He says.

Accordingly, two hands received from a suitable contributor are thus grafted to Steven. The operation, which took place in mid-December 2021, took 12 hours. The surgery was performed by a team from the National Health Service Fund at the Teaching Hospital in Leeds, UK. "The pain was the biggest thing. There are no words to describe the pain I felt before this surgery, but now that pain is unbelievably gone." Says.

Commenting on the operation, Professor Simon Kay of Lydis Teaching Hospital said, "A hand transplant is a very different matter than a kidney or other organ transplant because experience is something we see every day and apply to many things." He said that a separate psychiatric clinic had been set up for the patient to prepare him for the operation and that he had been made aware of the risk of rejection of the newly transplanted hands by the patient's body.