Soldier ‘good as new’ after having penis transplant

A SOLDIER injured in an IED attack has regained near-normal functions more than a year after receiving the world’s first penis and scrotum transplant.

The American army veteran, who uses the pseudonym Ray, said he was “feeling whole”.

The man was operated on last March at the pioneering Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, after being injured while serving in Afghanistan in 2010. Yesterday, his medical team reported that he now has “near-normal erections and the ability to achieve orgasm,” in a letter published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

They said that Ray can urinate standing up and without straining, “with the urine discharged in a strong stream”.

Richard James Redett III, a professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the hospital, said: “It’s the first time he’s felt normal in a long time.”

The operation is described in the MIT Technology Review as “a radical frontier of medicine: extremely rare, expensive, and difficult to perform. Grafting a penis from a deceased donor onto a living recipient is a chaotic amalgamation that entails stitching millimeters-wide [sic] blood vessels and nerves with minuscule sutures.”

Ray spoke to the publication last month, telling them that losing his legs and relying on prosthetics was not of great concern to him, but that he kept his genital injuries a secret. He will probably have to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of his life, which could put him at risk of infections, kidney problems and certain cancers.

However, he told the MIT Review that agreeing to the transplant was “one of the best decisions I ever made”.