Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore announced plans to perform a penis transplant on a wounded U.S. soldier in the coming months, which would make it the first organization to perform such a procedure in the United States.
The soldier in line for the procedure at Johns Hopkins lost most of his penis and endured substantial groin injuries in a bomb explosion while deployed overseas, according to a Reuters report.
The operation could open the door for Johns Hopkins surgeons to perform 60 more procedures on servicemen who suffered genital injuries. The surgeons would closely monitor the results of the transplants to decide whether the surgery could become a standard treatment.
"These genitourinary injuries are not things we hear about or read about very often," said W.P. Andrew Lee, MD, chairman of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Johns Hopkins Medicine. "I think one would agree it is as devastating as anything that our wounded warriors suffer, for a young man to come home in his early 20s with the pelvic area completely destroyed."
Johns Hopkins would be the first to perform a penis transplant in the United States, but not the first in the world. Two other penis transplants have been reported in medical journals — one in China, which was unsuccessful, and one in South Africa, which led to the patient eventually fathering his own biological child.
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