A young man, who has fully recovered after receiving an allogeneic transplant of two hands, marked his 20th birthday on Thursday in a hospital in Harbin, capital city of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

Gao Liang the patient, cut the cake with his new hands and handed out pieces to doctors and nurses in the No. 1 Clinic Medical College of the Harbin Medical Sciences University, where he received the transplant on January 13 last year.

Doctor Zhang Xinying said that it is no mean feat for Gao Liang to cut the cake with his hands, adding that it proves that the functions of his hands have virtually recovered.

The excited Gao told people present at his party that he can now brush his teeth, wash his face, comb his hair and put on his clothes with his new hands. "I'm so happy!" he said, and even won in an arm wrestling bout at his party.

Severe frostbite caused him to lose his hands and legs. He had artificial legs fitted in another hospital.

According to medical records, Gao's case is the fourth successful one in the world and the second in Asia.

Compared with heart transplants and other single organ transplants, hand transplants are much more complicated, involving even more systems such as skin, tendons, blood vessels, nerves, and bone marrow. Such transplants also have a very low success rate.

The development of advanced medical technology to reforge human limbs and reduce immunological rejection has made hand transplants a reality.

One year of close observation shows that Gao suffers no side effects caused by the medicines he took to prevent immunological rejection, and the nerves of his hand grow by 3 mm daily. Gao now takes a much smaller dose of medicine compared with other people who have transplanted hands.

To date, 10 similar operations have been completed in the world, seven of which were performed by Chinese doctors.

China currently has more than 8.5 million people with deformed limbs, out of the total population of 1.3 billion.

(Xinhua News Agency February 7, 2002)