A man who accidentally cut off his thumb has had his big toe attached in its place by surgeons.

James Byrne, 29, severed the thumb on his left hand last December while sawing through a piece of wood.

After an attempt to re-attach the damaged thumb was unsuccessful, Umraz Khan, plastic surgeon at Frenchay hospital, Bristol, transplanted the big toe from Byrne's left foot on to his hand.

Byrne, a paver and plant operator from Fishponds, Bristol, has an eight-year-old son, and surgeons said the usefulness of the toe on his hand outweighed the loss to his foot, although the latter might cause problems in the short term.

Byrne said: "Mr Khan re-attached my thumb but it had been badly damaged and although we tried everything, including leeches, to get the blood flowing again it didn't take.

"Mr Khan said to me, 'You will have a thumb even if I have to take your toe.' I thought he was joking, but he was serious and nine months later here it is.

"The aesthetics of it don't bother me. I am just happy that it works. My work as a paver would have been destroyed without the use of my hand because I couldn't pick up a brick without a thumb but now I hope I can be back at work in a few months.

"I never thought it would work but the surgical teams and the nurses have done such a fantastic job and the care has been amazing." Byrne will now have physiotherapy to help him to adapt to using his new thumb.

Frenchay hospital is a regional micro-surgery centre and has an international reputation in results and outcomes for patients needing this sort of complex surgery. Khan led two teams of surgeons and anaesthetists – one working on Byrne's toe while the other worked on his hand at the same time.

Khan said: "It is quite a rare thing to do and is a very complex micro-surgical procedure which involves re-attaching the bone, nerves, arteries, tendons, ligaments and skin of the toe to the hand.

"James will have to learn to rebalance, without his left great toe, on to the ball of the foot but he will be able to walk and jog normally.

"The thumb is the dominant digit. Without it, James would not be able to do the things that we take for granted, like holding a pen or opening a door.

"It is still early days for him and he might need additional surgery to make it look more like a thumb.

"The loss of the great toe is not as disabling as losing a thumb, so the loss far outweighs the gain."