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LONDON (Reuters) - Surgeons in China who said they
performed the first successful penis transplant had to
remove the donated organ because of the severe
psychological problems it caused to the recipient and
his wife.

Dr Weilie Hu and surgeons at Guangzhou General
Hospital in China performed the complex 15-hour
surgery on a 44-year old man whose penis had been
damaged in a traumatic accident.

The microsurgery to attach the penis, which had been
donated by the parents of a 22-year-old brain-dead
man, was successful but Hu and his team removed it two
weeks later.

"Because of a severe psychological problem of the
recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis
regretfully had to be cut off," Hu said in a report
published online by the peer reviewed journal European
Urology, without elaborating.

"This is the first reported case of penile
transplantation in a human," Hu added.

Both the man and his wife had requested the surgery.
He had been unable to have intercourse or urinate
properly since the accident that occurred 8 months
before the surgery was performed.

Ten days after the operation, which had been approved
by the hospital's medical ethical committee, the
recipient had been able to urinate.

There had been no signs of the 10-centimetre (4-inch)
organ being rejected by the recipient's body. But Hu
said more cases and longer observation are needed to
determine whether sexual sensation and function can be
restored.

"The patient finally decided to give up the treatment
because of the wife's psychological rejection, as well
as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis" Hu
added.

In a commentary in the journal, Yoram Vardi, of the
Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, said
the successful surgery represents an additional step
in contemporary medicine.

But he added that careful patient selection is
required as well as thorough informed consent of the
patient and his family.

"Satisfactory consideration of these issues must be
taken into account so that this approach can be
considered a serious therapeutic option in the
future," Vardi added.

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