A South African, who has had a penis transplant, is the third patient to benefit from the technique successfully.
The wait has been long. For 17 years, a South African lived without a penis, amputated because of the complications of circumcision. On April 21, her life returned to an almost normal course. Surgeons at Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town (South Africa) have successfully transplanted a whole penis for the second time. It is the first medical center to achieve this.
After removing the penis from a deceased donor, doctors worked for over nine hours. The intervention is called microsurgery: it involves grafting very fine blood vessels, as well as nerves, the urethra and the cavernous bodies. All these components are necessary for the good urinary and sexual function of the penis.
The tattooed penis
Prof. André Van der Merwe, who took part in the surgery, describes his patient as “one of the happiest in the service”. It must be said that the intervention was particularly successful. There is no sign of rejection, and all of the structures of the penis are healing properly.
The South African’s medical journey does not end there. It will be regularly monitored by the teams who operated on it. Within 6 months, he should be able to urinate easily and have normal intercourse. The situation of his predecessor is encouraging. The world’s first transplant patient became a dad just over a year after his transplant.
A medical tattoo will also allow you to forget about this “foreign penis”. Using the same technique as tattoos after breast cancer surgery, caregivers will make the two parts of the body a similar color.
250 amputations per year
This second recipient is a 40-year-old man whose penis was amputated after a traditional circumcision. The phenomenon is not uncommon in South Africa. The removal of the foreskin is a rite, but it is not always performed under satisfactory hygienic conditions.
It is estimated that 250 partial or total amputations of the penis occur each year in the country. The consequences extend far beyond functional disorders. “For these men, the penis defines masculinity, and losing this organ causes major emotional and psychological distress,” Dr Amir Zarrabi said in a statement.
As such, a penis transplant represents an ideal solution to ablations. But donors are still hard to find. Moreover, the intervention requires unwavering seriousness on the part of the patient. Large doses of immunosuppressants are needed to avoid rejection.
“The penis is a very immunogenic composite tissue, explained to Why actor urologist François Desgrandchamps. In the current state of available therapies, this immunosuppression is a vector of infectious and even tumor complications. This is one of the reasons why France does not practice these interventions.
Two successful precedents
At present, reconstruction of the penis is the preferred solution after ablation. Most often, the skin and soft tissues of the arm are used in order to reconstruct a penis. A prosthesis can be added to allow erection and intercourse. But complications are not uncommon after this intervention.
Penis transplantation remains little practiced. A first failure was reported in China in 2005. In 2014, a South African was the first man to benefit from this technique. Teams from Boston General Hospital in the United States followed two years later. If Thomas Manning was the lucky winner, many candidates for the transplant exist. From 2001 to 2013, 1,367 soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan were injured in the genitals according to the Pentagon.
The United States is also looking at a less disturbing alternative for the recipient and his companion: artificial penises. The test was successful in rabbits. The rodents copulated and four were successful in procreating.
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