Story highlights Doctors in China recently saved a factory worker's severed hand by temporarily attaching it to his leg

The man has regained some use of his hand after the doctors reattached it to his arm

Although these doctors in China have been performed this procedure before, there are no widely reported cases of this type of hand grafting in the U.S.

(CNN) A man in China may regain use of his hand after it was cut off in an industrial accident. Even more amazing is how the doctors saved the man's hand: They grafted it onto his leg.

The man, who has been identified as Mr. Zhou, lost his entire left hand several weeks ago in a spinning blade machine in the factory where he was working. A surgical team, led by Dr. Tang Juyu, carried out the procedure at the Xiangya Hospital in Changsha in central China.

Tang and the team decided they could not simply put the hand right back where it came from. "There were great risks to reattach the hand back directly to the arm, as tissues of the severed [area] were greatly damaged," Tang told CNN.

Instead they grafted the hand to Zhou's lower right calf, and connected it to blood vessels in the region to keep the tissue alive. The operation was a "race against time" to get the blood supply back to the severed hand, Tang said.

After about a month, the blood vessels and tendons in Zhou's arm healed and the doctors reattached the appendage to its original limb. Zhou has been reported to be able to move his fingers a little bit, and he will continue rehab to try to recover full use of the hand again.

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