First penis transplant comes unstuck

Ian Sample in London
September 19, 2006

A CHINESE man who had the world's first penis transplant had the organ removed two weeks later because he and his wife had a "severe psychological problem" with his new penis.

The man's penis was damaged beyond repair in an accident this year, leaving him with a one centimetre-long stump with which he was unable to urinate or have sexual intercourse.

"His quality of life was affected severely," said Dr Weilie Hu, a surgeon at Guangzhou General Hospital.

Doctors spent 15 hours attaching a 10-centimetre penis to the 44-year-old man after the parents of a brain-dead man half his age agreed to donate their son's organ.

The procedure, described in a case study due to appear in the journal European Urology next month, represents a big leap forward in transplant surgery.

After 10 days, tests revealed the organ had a rich blood supply and the man was able to urinate normally. Although the operation was a surgical success, surgeons said they had to remove the penis two weeks later.

"Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off," Dr Hu said.

An examination of the organ showed no signs of it being rejected by the body, he said.

Jean-Michel Dubernard, the French surgeon who this year performed the world's first face transplant on a woman who had been attacked by a dog, said psychological factors were a serious issue for many patients receiving certain "allografts", or organs from donors.

"Psychological consequences of hand and face allografts show that it is not so easy to use and see permanently a dead person's hands, nor is it easy to look in a mirror to see a dead person's face," Dr Dubernard wrote in European Urology.

"Clearly, in the Chinese case the failure at a very early stage was first psychological. It involved the recipient's wife and raised many questions."

In 2001, surgeons were forced to amputate the world's first transplanted hand from Clint Hallam, a 50-year-old New Zealander, who said he wanted the "hideous and withered" hand removed because he had become "mentally detached" from it.

Andrew George, a transplant expert at Imperial College London, said: "Doing a penis transplant should be no more complex than anything else. But it takes time for nerve sensations to kick in and it's not clear whether the patient would ever be able to have sex with it."

The Guardian