A 51-year-old man has fully recovered after receiving an allogeneic transplant of a full left forearm in China.
The patient, who only gave his surname as Wang, left hospital in Harbin, capital city of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province for home early Tuesday morning.
This is the first successful case of an allogeneic transplant of a full forearm in the world, said doctors with the No. 1 Clinic Medical College of the Harbin Medical Sciences University, where Wang received the transplant on June 23 last year.
Doctor Zhang Xinying said that Wang had his left forearm deformed in an accidental explosion and was admitted to the hospital for treatment.
Experts say that compared with heart transplants and other single organ, limb transplants are much more complicated, involving even more systems such as blood vessels, nerves, bone marrow, skeleton, lymph, tendon, muscle and skin.
(Xinhua News Agency January 29, 2002)
