new livers, hands, even faces. But what about penises?

Hi everyone, Julian here for DNews. It’s a sad reality that, as long as you have a

body, you can lose pieces of it. Accidents or tragedies can leave people missing parts

of themselves and until very recently, they would have to cope with the loss for the rest

of their lives.

Soldiers wounded in war know that reality all too often, as Improvised Explosive Devices,

also known as IEDs, frequently maim the men and women they don’t outright kill. Denise

Grady of the New York Times reported that often times male soldiers who wake up from

surgery are foremost concerned if their genitals are intact. Sergeant First Class Aaron Causey

lost both legs and a testicle to an IED and said that the psychological trauma of the

genital damage made it so much worse than the physical loss.

With that in mind, doctors are preparing to perform the first ever penis transplant in

the United States within the next year. Two previous attempts have been reported to journals,

so the surgery is still every experimental. So much so that the surgeons at Johns Hopkins

University School of Medicine have been researching and practicing on cadavers in preparation.

They’ve used brightly colored food dyes to map out the circulatory system in the cadaver

penises and have discovered previously unknown aspects of the blood supply.. When it comes

time for the operation, they’ll have to connect two to six nerves, six or seven arteries,

and the urethra, the tube that runs inside the penis.

If all goes well, they expect the grafted member to be more than just for show. After

allowing a few months for healing, the doctors expect the ability to urinate and feel sensation

through it will be restored. Eventually the patient will even be able to use it for sex

again.

Of course if you have a penis, or even if you don’t, the thought of having someone

else’s attached may concern you. That’s actually why the first ever penis transplant

in China back in 2006 failed. The operation was a success, but after 15 days the patient

claimed the psychological effects couldn’t be overcome, and the operation was reversed.

Dr. Gerald Brandacher of Johns Hopkins isn’t as concerned. He’s grafted new hands onto

patients since 1998, and although hands are a deeply personal part of our anatomy every

patient he’s ever had immediately started referring to the replacement as though it

were their own.

If they do regain the ability to have sex, there’s something else that can be their

own too; their children. So long as a testicle was left intact, then the genetic material

they pass on will be their own. In fact, the second and thus far only successful recipient

of a donor penis, a young man in South Africa who underwent surgery in 2014, reported this

year that he would become a father.

No loss of a body part is ever easy, but the stigma that comes with injured genitals makes

it that much more difficult. If the operation at Johns Hopkins is a success and moves out

of the realm of experimental surgery, it will go a long way towards helping wounded veterans

or similarly injured civilians heal.

A transplant is more complicated than just sewing everything together, and many of them

fail. Julia explains why it’s not a perfect solution here.