A LOCAL man who lost his hand in a jetski accident has become the first person in the UK to be fitted with a fully-motorised artificial replacement.

Chris Taylor, 58, from Ivybridge, has been fitted with the pioneering German hand, Michelangelo, which costs £47,000.

It is the first in the UK which has all five digits controlled by electronic signals.

Chris is now back at work and is delighted to be able to perform tasks most people take for granted, such as doing up a button or picking up a set of keys.

The self-employed lift service engineer said: 'Now I've got something on the end of my arm that actually works. It is going to make a huge difference to my life.'

The freak accident in which Chris lost his hand happened in 2009, when he had spent a day with his friend and son in Torquay driving a jetski.

He had been gripping a length of rope that was pulling his son on a rubber ring when a large wave struck the craft.

As Chris was thrown into the water, the rope tightened and ripped his hand clean off.

Dad of three Chris said: 'Somehow the rope must have slipped around my wrist and with the weight of me falling off, it cut my hand off.

'I saw blood on my wetsuit and a second after I thought, 'where's my hand?'

'I saw it wasn't there and grabbed at the sleeve of my wetsuit. I think it was natural instinct to protect the end of my arm.'

He said he felt no pain during the accident which happened on the August bank holiday weekend.

'I think the adrenalin kicked in and I felt nothing,' he said. 'It's amazing what the body can do.'

Since the accident Chris had been using a rudimentary NHS prosthetic hand, but then found out about the revolutionary 'Michaelangelo Hand' that was being invented.

He said: 'After my accident I was given an NHS hand which wasn't brilliant.

'The socket for my arm didn't fit very well. It was then that I started looking on the internet and saw the development of the Michelangelo hand.

'It was invented by German company Otto Bock but hadn't been released in the UK - they were still testing it.

'I kept on using the NHS hand while I waited for my insurance money from the accident to get sorted out and followed the Michelangelo Hand on the internet.

'I was attracted to the new technology in it, the fact it had a silicone socket that would fit my arm better, the overall look of it and that the thumb could be controlled electronically. I am really pleased that I have now been fitted with it. It is going to be a learning curve because I have been used to not having a hand for some time now.'

Bob Watts, managing director of Dorset Orthopaedic – where Chris had his hand fitted – said: 'What sets this apart from any other prosthetic hand is it is far more intelligent and it has a motorised thumb.

'With an able-bodied person, if the brain says 'close your hand' it sends a message to the hand without thinking.

This hand has a built-in software programme that does the same thing, it's just that there is no human hand there.

'But it has sensors that send the message from the muscles in the forearm to the hand. As a result the wrist, fingers and thumb can respond in a much more accurate and faster way than any other hand.

'Prosthetic hands have been around for 30 years but this is the only one that has a motorised thumb which can move and grip by itself.'