JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICINEAn Afghanistan War veteran whose legs and genitals were blown off in a roadside bomb explosion received a transplanted penis, scrotum without testicles, and partial abdominal wall in a 14-hour surgery on March 26 at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
“We are hopeful that this transplant will help restore near-normal urinary and sexual functions for this young man,” W.P. Andrew Lee, professor and director of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine, says in a statement.
Nine plastic surgeons and two urological surgeons performed the transplant, taking the genitals from a deceased donor. The surgery is considered the “most complex and extensive penis transplant to date, and the first performed on a combat veteran maimed by a blast,” according to The New York Times. A successful penis transplant was first performed in South Africa in 2014 and a second at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in 2016. But those transplants involved only the penis and not the scrotum or other flesh, The ...
