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A medical team from the Johns Hopkins University will be conducting the first penis transplant in the US in 2016.
The team of surgeons led Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee intends to help servicemen with genitourinary injuries who have lost all or part of their penis or testicles. In the coming months, the doctors hope to perform the first ever penile transplant in the US using an organ from a recently deceased donor.
The highly experimental surgery, which will take 12 hours, will allow patients to develop urinary function and sensation as well as the ability to have sexual intercourse.
During the operation, doctors will connect two to six nerves and six or seven arteries and veins. Within a week after the operation, patients are expected to urinate autonomously. However, other functions might take longer to return. Sexual functions will develop based on the growth of the nerves of the patient in the organ donor.
Patients will then be given anti-rejection medication once the transplant becomes successful. These medicines will stop the immune system from attacking the new organ but it does have side effects such as increased risk of developing cancer and contracting infections.
About 12% of the war injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan were genitourinary cases. The Department of Defense Trauma Registry reported that 1,367 men in military service suffered a genital injury during those conflicts.
“You put into context that these are usually young men who perhaps haven’t had a chance to start a family. A lot of time, masculinity has a lot to do with the perception of themselves. And to have [an] injury to the genitalia can be devastating to their identity and to their relationships back home,” Carissa Cooney of the Johns Hopkins University said.
Two other penile transplants had been carried out in the past: a failed case in Chile in 2006 and a successful case in South Africa in 2014.
