The United States' first penis transplant will be performed for a veteran returning from Afghanistan who suffered damage to his sexual organ.
Surgeons at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland say that within the next several months they will take an organ from a deceased donor and giving it to the soldier, according to the New York Times.
The Department of Defense reports that 1,367 men - mostly under 35 years of age - suffered genital wounds from 2001 to 2013, largely as the result of improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The world's first successful penis transplant was completed last year in South Africa for a 21-year-old man whose penis was amputated because of a botched circumcision during a coming-of-age ceremony.
The unidentified man was expected to have a recovery time of two years, but doctors say he and his girlfriend became pregnant this summer.
Doctors at Johns Hopkins are hoping that similar success will come for America's wounded warriors.
Previous efforts for those who suffered damage to their penises involved using tissue from other parts of the body, though erections were only possible with implants that have problems such as infections.
The new surgery is first being offered to soldiers who meet certain qualifications, such as having an intact urethra.
Doctors will then connect nerves, veins and arteries from the donor penis to the recipient in a 12-hour surgery.
Nerves from the soldier are then expected to grow into the penis at a rate of about one inch per month, eventually enabling sexual function.
Doctors Wei-Ping Andrew Lee, Richard Redett and Gerald Brandacher are donating their time to the process and the Department of Veterans Affairs is paying for the immunosuppression drug that will help prevent rejection.
The doctors said that they are moving heading and planning on putting the Afghanistan veteran on a waiting list for an organ soon.
Veterans say that the surgery will help heal unseen wounds for young men and hope that some of them will be able to have children because of the procedure.
'I don’t care who you are, military, civilian, anything you have an injury like this, it’s more than just a physical injury,' Army Sergeant First Class Aaron Causey, who lost both legs and a testicle because of a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, told the New York Times.
Testes are not being transplanted, and soldiers who also have testicular damage may receive penis transplants but will not be able to father children.
Penis donor's families are asked specifically whether their deceased loved one's sex organ can be used by another man.
South African urologist Andre van der Merwe said that one of the hardest parts of the process was finding a donor.
He ultimately made a fake penis out of skin for the deceased donor to be buried with, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
Last year, scientists at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine announced that they had given lab-grown penises in rabbits, and were hoping to start human trials within five years.
Eight of twelve rabbits given engineered erectile tissue successfully ejaculated and four of twelve impregnated female rabbits.
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