Penis repairs covered

Published on May 1, 2002

Chula doctors use scrotum parts to fix penile injuries

Chulalongkorn Hospital doctors have successfully used scrotum parts to repair wounds to male sexual organs.

It has proven to be a cheap process too.

Men with this problem can have operations to repair their penises under the Bt30 universal healthcare programme, Dr Sirichai Jindarak of the Chulalongkorn Hospital said yesterday.

Sirichai said three or four patients came in every month to seek treatment for damaged penises, many casualties of faulty penis-enlargement techniques.

They undergo surgery that takes between one hour and 90 minutes to graft parts from the scrotal sac onto the penis.

Because the cost of the surgery is not high, it is covered by the Bt30 programme.

This is because it has been classified as a medical process to correct organ impairment, the surgeon said.

Sirichai yesterday spoke at a seminar on male sexual-organ surgery at the hospital.

He also revealed that Thai doctors these days could do very advanced sexual-organ surgery.

His plastic-surgery division at Chulalongkorn Hospital has developed a new technique called Stage 1 to implant new foreskin by using part of the scrotum.

The hospital developed the operation from Korean techniques for restoring damaged foreskins he said.

It is more effective than using arm muscles and other organs as was done before, he said, which could easily rupture, particularly from friction.

Sirichai also warned men against injecting substances into their penises to enlarge them, which he said carried a high risk of cancer and deformation.

A more effective and safer enlargement technique, he said, is where doctors instead inject liquefied fat from the patient.

Usa Shevajumroen

THE NATION