An image released by the hospital where the surgery was performed

An image released by the hospital where the surgery was performed

DOCTORS IN THE US have performed the world’s first total penis and scrotum transplant on a military serviceman who was wounded in Afghanistan. The former soldier, who wants to remain anonymous, is now recovering and should be released from the hospital later this week, according to physicians from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. A team of 11 specialists – nine plastic surgeons and two urological surgeons – performed the 14-hour procedure on March 26, transplanting the entire penis, scrotum and part of the abdominal wall from a deceased donor. Dr WP Andrew Lee, professor and director of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said: “We are hopeful that this transplant will help restore near-normal urinary and sexual functions for this young man.”

The soldier, who wishes to remain anonymous, said in a statement: “It’s a real mind-boggling injury to suffer, it is not an easy one to accept. The transplant recipient, who wished to remain anonymous, is a young US serviceman who sustained injuries to his lower pelvis, lower abdominal wall and lower extremities in an improvised explosive device blast while serving in Afghanistan. “Genitourinary injury, where the male service members’ external genitalia are lost or severely damaged, is one such ‘unspoken injury of war.’ ”

In order to perform the transplant, the team had to obtain the necessary tissues — consisting of a penis, scrotum, and part of the lower abdominal wall — from a deceased donor, according to Dr. Rick Redett, clinical director of the Johns Hopkins genitourinary transplant program and another surgeon on the case. Confidence … like finally I’m okay now.”

According to the Baltimore Sun, 1,367 male service members were placed on the Department of Defense Trauma Registry with genitourinary injuries between 2001 and 2013. “When we saw him and met him and examined him, and we knew we didn’t have much to offer him, we started thinking about transplantation.”

He is expected to be discharged from the hospital this week after recovering from the 14-hour surgery back on March 26. The first penis transplant in the United States occurred in May 2016 at Massachusetts General Hospital, where patient Thomas Manning had a more limited procedure than last month’s operation after being diagnosed with penile cancer in 2012.
Doctors at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, perform the world's first successful transplant of a penis and scrotum from a deceased donor to a U.S. soldier injured in Afghanistan. The testicles are not transplanted.