Turkish limb-transplant patient dies

ANTALYA – Doğan News Agency

Atilla Kavdır. DHA Photo

Turkey’s first triple-limb transplant patient, Atilla Kavdır, died early this morning, about 100 days after undergoing landmark transplant surgery at Akdeniz University, in the Mediterranean province of Antalya.

Kavdır was admitted to an intensive-care unit on May 2, with heart and kidney failure. Doctors first yesterday that he had died but then revoked the anouncement; Kavdır was alive but in critical condition, his doctors said yesterday.

Today at 4:00 a.m. Dr. Ömer Özkan, the head of the team of doctors at Akdeniz University Hospital that performed Kavdır’s operation on Jan. 21, said Kavdır had died.

Kavdır was Turkey’s first triple-limb transplant patient, receiving two arms and a leg, but his body rejected the leg a day after the surgery. Kavdır lost his arms and right leg when he was 11 years old, after he electrified himself by striking a power line outside his home with an iron rod to scare away pigeons.

“I have been living without arms for 23 years; I want to hold my wife’s and my children’s hands and perhaps drive a motorbike or car,” Kavdır had said at an earlier press meeting. Kavdır held hands with his wife, Ayşe Kavdır, for the first time on April 3.

“We had always dreamed of this day. Hopefully, I will also see the day when my husband wears a wedding ring on his finger and puts on a watch on his wrist,” Ayşe Kavdır, who had been married to Atilla Kavdır for 17 years, had said at that time.