A man given just a year to live without a new liver yesterday hailed his wife as "the bravest woman in Scotland" after they took part in the country's first live donor transplant.

Daniel Foster, 28, credits his wife, Jennifer, with saving his life after she gave him more than half of her healthy liver.

The couple underwent an 11-hour operation on January 16, just eight months after they were married.

The operation, carried out at Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary, was the first live liver transplant to take place in Scotland, and is one of only a handful of similar procedures to have taken place in the UK.

Mr Foster, who is said to be making a good recovery after the 10-hour operation, said of his wife: "As far as I'm concerned, she's the bravest woman in Scotland. She's incredible."

Mr Foster, a trained massage therapist from New Zealand, said he was deteriorating day by day with the condition Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis, which attacks the bile glands and liver.

He said medics once told him he would need a transplant within a year. But he has been given a new chance at life after his wife agreed to give him 60% of her liver.

Speaking at a press conference at the hospital, Mr Foster said he faced a tough decision in agreeing for them both to go through with the procedure.

"As adamant as Jen was about doing the operation, it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," he said.

"It's an impossible thing to be asked to do. On the one hand, if I didn't get a transplant, I wouldn't be here.

"On the other hand, Jen said to me, If the shoe was on the other foot, what would you do?' and I would have done it in a heartbeat. We only got married last year. We've got our whole life in front of us."

He said they only made the decision to go ahead with it because they had "100% faith" in the surgeons at Edinburgh.

Mr Foster said: "I don't have that feeling of impending doom hanging over me any more.

I've got so much to look forward to now. It's knowing my life's coming back to me, that's what I'm enjoying most."

Asked about the procedure, Mrs Foster, 26, a student vet nurse, added: "I didn't think twice."

Also at the press conference yesterday was Mrs Foster's mother, Mae Welsh, 52, of Ayrshire, who said: "They were made for each other."

Live donor liver transplantation has been carried out for a number of years in other countries across the world, but the stakes are high for both people involved and the procedure has been slow to be introduced in the UK. Three live donor liver transplants have been performed for NHS patients in Leeds in the past year.

Mrs Foster said she was the one who approached Edinburgh surgeons after hearing about the procedure. The couple were lucky enough to share the same blood group - a factor vital in the success of the operation.

Mrs Foster had to go through months of physical and psychological tests before the surgery.

She said: "No-one actually approached me. I knew when I met Dan that this was going to have to be a road that he was going to go down.

"The transplant was the only way to really keep him alive in future. But I just didn't realise that it was going to be so soon after meeting him."

Mrs Foster, who was discharged six days after the operation and is now "90%" back to normal, urged anyone who has ever considered being an organ donor to sign up.

She said: "This procedure involves major surgery on an otherwise healthy person and I believe my operation would not have been necessary if our country's donor system met the demand for much-needed organs.

"People on the list are dying needlessly while awaiting a suitable donor to become available."

Murat Akyol and Ernest Hidalgo were the consultant surgeons in charge of the operations. They said the success of the procedure gives them "another option" when treating patients in the future.

"This is a truly extraordinary gift from Jen to Dan," said Mr Akyol.