U.S. soldier undergoes rare double-arm transplant surgery

BALTIMORE (AP) ― A U.S. soldier who lost all four limbs in an Iraq roadside bombing says he looks forward to driving and swimming after a rare double-arm transplant surgery.

Twenty-six-year-old Brendan Marrocco spoke at a news conference Tuesday at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He was joined by the surgeons who performed the double-arm transplant.

The procedure was only the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant ever conducted in the United States.

Marrocco says he’s happy and amazed to have new arms. He has prosthetic legs but says that without arms, he felt “kind of lost for a while.”

The infantryman was injured in 2009. He also received bone marrow from the same dead donor to minimize the medicine needed to prevent rejection.