The world’s first double leg transplant was performed in Spain this week.

On Sunday, Pedro Cavadas and around 50 of his colleagues at La Fe Hospital in Valencia surgically transplanted two donated legs to the as-yet-unidentified man who lost his own lower limbs in an accident.

The 13-hour surgery will have involved carefully re-attaching blood vessels and dragging nerve vessels close together. “All nerves are joined under a microscope,” says Nadey Hakim, surgical director of the transplant unit at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London. “You pull them together and hope they grow in the right direction.”

Hakim, who carried out the first double arm transplant over a decade ago, points out that leg transplants involve a much more complex procedure because the vessels and nerves are larger.


Unlike arm transplants, leg transplants are not a good option for limb amputees, Hakim says. “You can’t function without your hands, but there are a lot of good prosthetic options for legs.”

In this case, however, the man’s legs had been amputated high on the thigh, leaving too little tissue to attach a prosthetic limb, making a double leg transplant the only option. There was “no alternative”, reported Spain’s National Transplant Organisation in a statement last year, when giving the surgery the go-ahead.

Hakim expects that, while it will take at least a year for the man to feel sensations in his new legs, physiotherapy and the use of crutches should help him gain full function of both limbs.

The man is currently recovering in hospital and is receiving intensive treatment to suppress his body’s immune response to prevent rejection of the legs. He is said to be awake and “very happy” with his new legs. It is likely that doctors will be able to gauge the success of the surgery within a month. If successful, Cavadas hopes that the patient will be able to move his knees within a few weeks, and start walking in six to seven months time.