Apr 22: A rare birth defect, a Brazilian baby boy with two penises, has had to gone through removal operation of the comparatively bigger one.
Only one in every five to six million baby boys are born with an extra penis, a condition called diphallia.
Doctors at the Federal University of Sao Paulo were originally planning on removing the two-year-old’s right penis — which was smaller. However, surgeons decided to lop off the other one after the boy’s mother revealed he could only urinate from his right.
Examinations showed that his left penis – the bigger of the two – couldn’t function correctly as the boy’s urethra was too narrow for urine to pass through.
“The cystoscopy through the right penile identified the urethral confluence in the bulbar area. We performed a meatotomy in the left penile to insert the cystoscope and confirmed the blind ending urethra. We decided to remove this penile. The penile was degloved entirely and clamped and took out the corpora at the base,” the doctors wrote.
The surgery was completed without a hitch, with surgeons able to completely detach the bigger penis.
Detailing the case in the Journal of Pediatric Urology, surgeons did not explain why the boy’s issue was only fixed when he was two. The authors also didn’t say how much bigger his left penis was.
How diphallia occurs is unclear with no known single risk factor — but it’s thought to happen by chance when genitalia develop in the womb.
Patients can either have complete diphallia, when both penises are well developed, such as in the Brazilian boy’s case, or partial diphallia, when one penis is smaller or deformed.
Given that he now only has one corpora cavernosa it remains unclear whether he’ll ever be able to achieve erections.
This follows a similar case reported in Urology Case Reports earlier this year, when doctors in Uzbekistan came across a seven-year-old with two functioning penises.
Both members had urethras and erectile tissue, but it was unclear whether both could actually become erect.
