LONDON - Surgeons in China who said they performed the first successful penis
transplant had to remove the donated organ because of the severe psychological
problems it caused to the recipient and his wife.
Dr Weilie Hu and surgeons at Guangzhou General Hospital in China performed
the complex 15-hour surgery on a 44-year old man whose penis had been damaged in
a traumatic accident.
The microsurgery to attach the penis, which had been donated by the parents
of a 22-year-old brain-dead man, was successful but Hu and his team removed it
two weeks later.
"Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the
transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off," Hu said in a report published
online by the peer reviewed journal European Urology, without elaborating.
"This is the first reported case of penile transplantation in a human," Hu
added.
Both the man and his wife had requested the surgery. He had been unable to
have intercourse or urinate properly since the accident that occurred 8 months
before the surgery was performed.
Ten days after the operation, which had been approved by the hospital's
medical ethical committee, the recipient had been able to urinate.
There had been no signs of the 10-centimetre (4-inch) organ being rejected by
the recipient's body. But Hu said more cases and longer observation are needed
to determine whether sexual sensation and function can be restored.
"The patient finally decided to give up the treatment because of the wife's
psychological rejection, as well as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis"
Hu added.
In a commentary in the journal, Yoram Vardi, of the Rambam Medical Center in
Haifa, Israel, said the successful surgery represents an additional step in
contemporary medicine.
But he added that careful patient selection is required as well as thorough
informed consent of the patient and his family.
"Satisfactory consideration of these issues must be taken into account so
that this approach can be considered a serious therapeutic option in the
future," Vardi added.
