1st Penis Transplant Reversed After 14 Days

Doctors in China said Tuesday that they had successfully transplanted a penis on a man who had lost his own in an accident, but were forced to remove it only two weeks later because of psychological problems experienced by the man and his wife.

Surgeons at Guangzhou General Hospital in southern Guangdong Province performed the transplant in September 2005, a hospital spokesperson said. The penis came from a 22-year-old brain-dead man whose parents had agreed to donate the organ. But the report did not explain how the 44-year-old man lost his own penis, saying only that "an unfortunate traumatic accident" left him with a small stump, unable to urinate or have sex normally, the Associated Press reported.

Fourteen days after the penis transplant, the recipient and his wife asked that the organ be removed "because of the wife's psychological rejection as well as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis," the surgeons reported in the journal European Urology, published by the European Association of Urology.

The doctors said lab examinations showed no sign of rejection. The procedure was believed to the first such transplant reported in a medical journal, according to the AP.

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source:HealthDay.com