'Whole again' after transplant first

Published on Wednesday 8 October 2008 23:13

THE world's first double arm transplant patient spoke yesterday of his "indescribable feeling of being a whole man again".

Karl Merk, 54, a German farmer, lost his arms six years ago in an accident involving a combine harvester.

Found bleeding heavily by a colleague, he screamed: "Kill me, kill me." But the man saved his life.

Yesterday, Mr Merk gave a press conference with his doctors at the teaching hospital of the Technical University in Munich, where he underwent the transplant in July.

"These are my arms, and I'm not giving them away again," he said.

Mr Merk said that when he first woke up, he could not believe the operation had been a success. "It was really overwhelming when I saw that I had arms again," he said.

So far he can perform simple tasks with his new arms – using them to open doors and turn lights on and off. "The feeling is indescribable. Every day I gain more mobility in them," he said.

His arms are supported by a special corset while the healing continues.

The procedure, a world first, was conducted over two days.

Five teams working in two operating rooms gathered at 10pm the night of the operation, one on each side of the patient and the donor, who had died only hours before. The fifth group removed a leg vein from the donor.

The first step was to expose the 20 muscles, nerves and blood vessels to be connected. Before the bones of the donor could be cut, blood vessels in his arms were filled with a cooled preservation solution.

Both arms were then removed exactly at the point matching Mr Merk's stumps. First the bones were joined, then arteries and veins as possible. The surgeons attached the muscles and tendons, then the nerves and finally the skin.

The doctors said there had been "no sign" that Mr Merk's immune system was rejecting the foreign tissue, as was feared before the procedure, and that his scars were healing well.

The identity of his donor has never been revealed but was reported in the German media to be a teenaged car crash victim.