A mentally ill man who deliberately chopped off his penis during a suicide attempt was able to get erections just six weeks after doctors reattached it.
The 34-year-old, from Birmingham, was found unconscious at his home following a psychotic episode in which he amputated his genitalia with a kitchen knife.
Disturbing images revealing his injury were published in the British Medical Journal Case Reports.
The unidentified patient, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, was also found with self-inflicted stab wounds on several parts of his body.
His penis was put on ice and taken to University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust in the ambulance with him.
By the time he was resuscitated and rushed into the operating theatre, his penis had been detached from his body for 23 hours.
For the best chance of surgery being a success, previous case studies have found that the penis needs to be replanted within 15 hours.
A mentally ill man, 34, from Birmingham, who deliberately chopped off his penis during a suicide attempt was able to get erections just six weeks after doctors reattached it (file)
Doctors reattached the severed part of his penis to the stump and took a piece of vein from the patient’s arm to get blood flowing again.
The patient was fitted with a catheter to help him urinate.
He was taken to a general ward to recover and put on a course of antibiotics before being transferred to a psychiatric unit after two weeks.
The catheter was left in for a month after discharge and his penis was cleaned daily with antiseptics to prevent it from becoming infected.
‘The patient reported return of sensation to the penis as well as spontaneous erection six weeks postoperatively,’ the authors wrote in the report.
He was given a skin graft a few months later after the skin on the shaft of his penis started to rot. It’s unclear if the patient will require future skin grafts.
The surgeons said it was the first documented case of penal reattachment so long after amputation.
The team hope it will encourage other medics to attempt reattachment surgery even when the penis has been dethatched from the body for such a long period of time.
‘Given the significance of the amputated organ, replantation was attempted in this case despite the long warm and total ischemia time, which is the longest in reported literature,’ they said.
‘The success of this case therefore should encourage surgeons to attempt penile replantation, even with prolonged ischemia (loss of blood supply) time, due to possible success and the potential physical and psychosocial effects of organ loss for the patient.’
Transgender woman, 24, is forced to have testicle removed after it became twisted in agonising injury caused by ‘tucking’
A transgender woman needed to have one of her testicles removed because of her habit of ‘tucking’ – made famous through hit TV show Ru Paul’s Drag Race.
The unidentified 24-year-old, from the Philippines, had not yet undergone full gender reassignment surgery.
The avid cross-dresser pushed her testicles back into her stomach four times a week ever since becoming an adult, in an effort to hide her genitals.
Her habit often caused her pain but she shrugged it off.
But when pulling her testicles back down into her scrotum during her final attempt, one of them twisted around the cord it dangles from.
The grisly accident – known as testicular torsion – left the woman in unbearable pain and cut off the blood supply to her genitals.
Without urgent treatment to get blood flowing again the testicle can die and have to be removed.
Experts told MailOnline that while there is little research into the dangers of tucking, it does pose an obvious threat to testicles. They said any severe testicle pain lasting at least 20 minutes should be reported to a doctor immediately.
Tucking is a common practice in trans and drag communities, with the habit being featured in VH1’s Ru Paul’s Drag Race.
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