World News for Students of English

16-06-2015 15:00

The man who had the world’s first penis transplant is apparently going to become a dad.

Experts were predicting it could take two years for the South African patient to regain all functions, but the 21-year-old trooper has reportedly shown this had been achieved in just four months. South African outlet News24 reported that just six months after the unnamed man’s surgery was successful, the surgeon said his girlfriend say she’s pregnant.

Surgeons at Stellenbosch University and Tygerberg Hospital performed a nine-hour operation to attach a donated penis.

“The penis was harvested from a donor whose family consented and we transplanted it in a nine-hour operation to the recipient. He’s very happy, and he’s not having any major side effects from the immune suppression.”

The man had been left with just one centrimetre of his original penis as a result of a botched circumcision. He was 18 and sexually active at the time.

When attaching the donated penis, the team used some of the techniques that had been developed to perform the first face transplants, in order to connect the tiny blood vessels and nerves.

Difficult words: trooper (soldier and a person who works hard), outlet (news organization), harvest (to get), consent (to have permission), recipient (person who gets something), immune suppression (when you take medicine to make your immune system weaker so your body does not attack your new body part), botched (badly done), circumcision (when part of the penis is cut off), tiny (very small).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com