Doctors Cautiously Optimistic About Nation’s First Penis Transplant
The operation was part of a research program with the ultimate goal of helping combat veterans with severe pelvic injuries, as well as cancer patients and accident victims.
A man whose penis was removed because of cancer has received the first penis transplant in the United States, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Thomas Manning, 64, a bank courier from Halifax, Mass., underwent the 15-hour transplant operation on May 8 and 9. The organ came from a deceased donor. 鈥淚 want to go back to being who I was,鈥 Mr. Manning said on Friday. (Grady, 5/16)
The idea came from the patient himself. Devastated by a rare form of cancer that led to the removal of his penis in 2012, Thomas Manning asked his urologist to consider something radical and relatively untested. (Levenson, 5/16)
Back in 2012, Thomas Manning of Halifax, Massachusetts, suffered a serious groin injury when a heavy cart fell on him at work. As he was being treated for it, his doctors found an aggressive cancer growing in his penis, and amputated most of it. 鈥淗e鈥檚 really an incredible person that after that surgery, totally unprovoked, said, 鈥楧oc, if I can have a penile transplant, I鈥檓 your patient,鈥 鈥 Manning鈥檚 doctor, MGH urologic oncologist Adam Feldman, told reporters on Monday. 鈥淎nd then shortly afterward was when the program started and I said, 鈥榊ou know 鈥 there just might be something here for you.鈥 鈥 It took more than three years for all the pieces to come together, but Manning, 64, has now received the country鈥檚 first penis transplant. Surgeons in South Africa and China have performed similar operations. (Goldberg, 5/16)
The timing could hardly have been worse. Just when an organ became available for the first-ever penis transplant in the United States, almost every last urologist in the country was at a conference in San Diego, Calif. (Boodman, 5/16)
Penis transplants have generated intense interest among veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, but they will require more extensive surgery since their injuries, often from roadside bombs, tend to be more extensive, with damage to blood vessels, nerves and pelvic tissue that also will need repair, Lee noted. The Department of Defense Trauma Registry has recorded 1,367 male service members who survived with genitourinary injuries between 2001 and 2013. It's not clear how many victims lost all or part of the penis. (5/16)
