A team of US doctors has successfully carried out the world’s first total transplant of a penis and scrotum. Surgeons at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, performed the operation on a soldier who had been wounded by a bomb in Afghanistan.
They used a penis, scrotum and partial abdominal wall transplanted from a deceased donor. They say the soldier should be able to regain sexual function, which is impossible with penis reconstructions.
The team of 11 surgeons performed the transplant over 14 hours on 26 March.
It is the first surgery on a combat veteran injured on duty and the first to transplant a complete section of tissue including the scrotum and surrounding abdominal area.
Doctors said the donor testicles were not transplanted, due to ethical considerations.
“While extremity amputations are visible and resultant disability obvious,” said Dr WP Andrew Lee, head of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Johns Hopkins University, during a telebriefing on Monday, “some war injuries are hidden and their impact not widely appreciated by others.”
The transplant team also said that the university has approved 60 genital transplant surgeries as a part of the programme. The first penis transplant in the US was in 2016 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. In 2014, South African surgeons performed the world’s first successful penis transplant.
The soldier, who wishes to remain anonymous, said in a statement released by the university: “When I first woke up, I felt finally more normal like finally I’m okay now.”
