Man born without a penis now has a 'bionic' one

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDJun 26 2018

A 44 year old British man, Andrew Wardle, was born without a penis, He successfully underwent a series of operations at London’s University Hospital that gave him a £50,000 penile implant last Friday.

Mr. Wardle, from Greater Manchester, can now have a normal sexual relationship say the team of doctors treating him. As an experiment his implant was inflated and that gave him an erection that would last for ten days before it would be deflated. Mr. Wardle is recovering from the operation now. He would have to wait for six weeks before he can have sexual intercourse with his long term live in partner Fedra Fabian says the team of doctors.

Andrew Wardle was born without a penis and had to undergo a positive phalloplasty operation. In this operation he had a pump fitted on him to create an artificial erection. Andrew calls himself “bionic man” – “half human and half robot” with his implant. He says that this implant would finally “enable him to feel part of the society” joking that he would be able to “perform” even when he is drunk.

He was born with bladder exostrophy. This means that in a rare birth defect his urinary bladder was formed outside the body. His condition is seen in one in 20 million live male births. As a baby he had to undergo operations to create an opening artificially to urinate. A series of 15 operations took place thereafter for the doctors to create a tube that led out of his bladder. Due to the difficulty in urination he also developed kidney problems. With time his problems led to depression and he attempted suicide in 2012.

Dan Wood, a consultant urologist at UCLH in London gave him hope thereafter and he underwent his first operation that removed his urostomy bag in February 2014. The urostomy bag was an artificial tube like opening connected to a bag that helped the urine to flow out and collect outside of his body. After removal of the bag he was given a catheter that would help him urinate. An artificial penis was created in November 2015 with the skin, nerves and muscles of his left arm and veins from his left leg. Urologist David Ralph and his colleagues came up with the bionic penis that was finally in place last week.