Injured hands of three men in Austria have been replaced with bionic ones. The three men have become the first to undergo bionic reconstruction.

These bionic ones can be controlled using nerves and muscles transplanted into their arms from their legs. It has been informed that bionic reconstruction involves a voluntary amputation, the transplantation of nerves and muscles and learning to utilize faint signals from them to command the hand.

The cases of the three have been described in a report published in the journal Lancet. People previously with bionic hands have primarily controlled them with manual settings. According to Dr. Oskar Aszmann of the Medical University of Vienna, who developed the approach with colleagues, for the first time they have bionically reconstructed a hand.

"If I saw these kinds of patients five to seven years ago, I would have just shrugged my shoulders and said, `there's nothing I can do for you", said Aszmann.

The 30-year-old, Milorad Marinkovic, who lost the use of his right hand in a motorbike accident over a decade ago, said that the bionic hand has helped him to hold things such as sandwich or bottle of water. Patients such as Marinkovic have only few complaints regarding the bionic hand. It has been estimated that the new procedure costs around 30,000 euros.

According to Dr. Simon Kay, who authored an accompanying commentary and carried out Britain's first hand transplant, it is expected that there would be major limits to bionic hands always. He also said that the brain has thousands of ways in order to send messages to the human hand but it is not possible for a robotic prosthetic to handle such difficulty.