A Chinese accident victim who became the world's first successful recipient of a transplanted penis psychologically rejected it and asked for its removal.
Surgeons at Guangzhou General Hospital said it took 15 hours of microsurgery on the unidentified 44-year-old man to attach the 4-inch organ donated by the family of a younger brain-dead patient.
In their report due to appear in next month's journal European Urology, the doctors said after 10 days, the man, who had been injured in an accident, was able to urinate normally, but he was unhappy with the operation.
"Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off," said Dr. Weilie Hu.
It was not known if the man would have been able to have sex, The Guardian reported.
Doctors have been successful at time in reconnecting a man's own severed organ but this was the first apparent success at using a second-party penis, the newspaper said.
Copyright 2006 by United Press International
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