China —
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 Centre
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.
