Richard Mangino's Outstanding Recovery

Richard Mangino a few weeks after surgery. (Photo by Michael Warren.)

While tracking down some of Boston’s most outstanding medical breakthroughs for our Top Docs issue last December, I had the pleasure of meeting Richard Mangino, the quadruple amputee who had just received a remarkable double hand transplant at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

At the time, it was only a few weeks after the surgery, so Mangino’s hands were still wrapped in bandages and extremely fragile. He’d regained the ability to move his fingers, but only slightly. Today, four months after the surgery, the Globe checks in on Mangino and reports that he’s now able to feel pressure on his hands, and the hair and fingernails on his new limbs are starting to grow. What’s more, he’s able to play piano again.

“Some people call me hand-some,” Mangino joked as he sat through our photo shoot. He was charming and charismatic, full of life and incredibly thankful to have been given such a gift. He looked great then, and now he’s looking better than ever.