American soldiers wounded in battle will be the recipients of the first ever batch of penis transplants that will be done in the U.S., the New York Times reported. Penis transplants for 60 soldiers were approved for Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to perform. These men suffered from genitourinary injuries - or injuries to the penis and testicles - and doctors are hopeful that this will help restore to the soldiers not just the possibility for them to have children but also their self-esteem.
"These genitourinary injuries are not things we hear about or read about very often," Dr. W. P. Andrew Lee, the chairman of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Johns Hopkins, told the New York Times. "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."
The Department of Defense Trauma Registry records show 1,367 soldiers who suffered from genitourinary injuries while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan from 2001 to 2013. Most of them were below the age of 35 and were injured by improvised explosive devices or IEDs, according to the Washington Post.
One of them, Sgt. First Class Aaron Causey, lost both his legs to an IED when he was in Afghanistan in 2011. However, he considers losing one testicle and damaging a part of the other one during the explosion was the most devastating of all.
"I don't care who you are - military, civilian, anything - you have an injury like this, it's more than just a physical injury," Causey said.
The procedure is expected to take 12 hours, during which doctors will connect nerves, arteries and veins. Doctors said the transplanted penis will be able to function normally in a few months. Lee said patients should not be unrealistic about their expectations, but hoping to be able to father a child is "a realistic goal."
The purpose for the transplant is to restore not just the organ's appearance but also its function, which is what most patients really want, according to Dr. Gerald Brandacher, Johns Hopkins' scientific director of reconstructive transplanatation program.
There had only been two penis transplants performed in the world: one in China and one in South Africa. Only the latter was successful, and the patient is now a father.
