| jackiechan 2003-02-26, 8:15 am |
| Penis transplant a world first
25feb03
IN what is claimed to be a first in medical history, doctors have transplanted a penis from a child born with two to another born without one.
The three-hour transplant, which doctors say is the first of its kind in the world, was performed on a seven-month-old child at the Nil Ratan Sircar Medical college Hospital in Calcutta.
The penis was taken from a one-year-old child from Shantipur in Bengal's Nadia district. The donor baby had been born with two external male genitals with normal growth and scrota but no rectum.
The baby without a penis had been urinating through his rectum.
According to Dr Ashok Ray, the leader of the medical team and a noted pediatric surgeon, the surgeons first constructed the rectum and then removed the extra male member in another operation two weeks later.
The doctors realised they could make medical history when another child admitted to the same hospital was discovered without a penis, Dr Ray told the Calcutta daily newspaper The Telegraph. |