Surgeons at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore successfully completed the world's first scrotum-included penis transplant last month, restoring cock and balls to a soldier maimed by an IED in Afghanistan.
The 14-hour operation took place March 26 and involved nine plastic surgeons and two urological surgeons, transplanting the penis, scrotum and partial abdominal wall from a dead donor. Doctors from the same team also performed America's first bilateral arm transplant.
The donor's testes were not transplanted due to ethical guidelines, as the new owner may otherwise produce offspring with the donor's genetics. The recipient will not be able to father children.
"We are hopeful that this transplant will help restore near-normal urinary and sexual functions for this young man," W.P. Andrew Lee, M.D., professor and director of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a press release.
The anonymous recipient is delighted with his new equipment: "When I first woke up, I felt finally more normal… [with] a level of confidence as well. Confidence… like finally I'm okay now."
The technical term for the operation is a vascularized composite allotransplantation, rewiring skin, muscles and tendons, nerves, bone and blood vessels. The patient will require a regimen of immunosuppressant medication.
Genital mutilation is reportedly a common but rarely-discussed outcome of IED blasts, with 2013 U.S. Department of Defense figures recording 1,367 servicemen having suffered genito-urinary injuries since the invasion of Afghanistan and Johns Hopkins describing lost penises as "an unspoken injury of war."
The New York Times reports two other penis transplants, though neither included the scrotum.
Devon Stuart for Johns Hopkins Medicine
