Doctors Perform Quadruple Limb Transplant

Turkish surgeons claim to have carried out the world's first quadruple limb transplant on a man whose legs and arms were amputated when he was 13.

More than 50 doctors were involved in the 20-hour operation to attach two arms and two legs to 27-year-old Sevket Cavdar.

After the operation, surgeon Serdar Nasir said: "We have good results but maybe we will lose all of the limbs.

"Maybe (we'll) lose only one or two, we have to wait, but I think for now we have good results."

The head physician at Hacettepe University Hospital in the capital Ankara has appealed for blood donations in case of complications.

While the doctors are cautious, for Mr Cavdar, the operation is one which could change his life forever.

The patient's brother-in-law, Cengiz Cavdar, said: "(He) has only been seeing himself walking in his dreams.

"We hope that he will be able to walk one day in real life.

"This is just the beginning. He always wanted to become a driver one day."

The record breaking transplant follows another failed triple transplant two months ago at another Turkish hospital in the Mediterranean province of Antalya.

Following that operation doctors had to remove a transplanted leg after it was rejected due to tissue incompatibility.