Doctors have released pictures of the first man to have a double arm transplant.
The German man who was not named for legal reasons made medical history by having two complete arms transplanted.

He has been given the arms of a teenage boy who is believed to have died in a car crash. The 54-year-old patient lost both of his arms in a farming accident six years ago.

The operation, which was conducted at the Klinikum rechts der Isar hospital in Munich by a team of 30 experts lead by Edgar Biemer and Christoph Hoehnke, lasted over 16 hours from Friday until Saturday last week. The arm donor who had been declared brain dead was kept alive on a life support until the arms were ready to be transplanted.

The hospital said that the dead arms had to be kept filled with blood when severed and chilled to keep them alive, but that attaching them with chilled blood inside would have killed the 54-year-old man.

They avoided the problem by switching on the blood supply to one arm and then to the second arm half an hour later.