A transplant of two arms and two shoulders on an Icelandic patient was performed at the Edouard-Herriot hospital in Lyon ten days ago.
The operation lasted more than 15 hours and today this man is fine.
He gave his news in a video.
It's a very little something in the upper arms, a tiny sensation.
And yet, it is the most beautiful victory for Félix Gretarsson who speaks to his doctors from his hospital bed.
"I would like to thank the entire team of doctors who make this operation possible," he said in a video broadcast by the Edouard-Herriot hospital in Lyon, which achieved the feat.
This man became the first patient to have both shoulders and two arms transplanted on January 13, and he is doing well.
Twenty years ago, this Icelandic was amputated after an electrocution on a high voltage line.
He is recovering slowly from his operation 10 days ago and is even starting to have sensations again.
"Obtain active elbow flexion"
About fifty specialists were involved, including the best surgeons, the best anesthetists, for 15 hours of operation, the most impressive of its kind in the world.
"Hands don't change life, but our patients have told us, they give life back," says Aram Gazarian, one of Felix's doctors.
He immediately warns that this transplant will not allow him to get his life back.
"You can't promise what you can't keep. The only thing you can say is that you have good reason to hope that he gets active flexion of the elbow to the left. stay, we're not sure. "
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The patient knows it, he who has already undergone fifty operations since his accident.
It is a new psychological fight which opens, because the risks of rejection are real and the rehabilitation, exhausting, must last several years.