After failed circumcision, surgeon enables Muslim to marry
February 24th, 2010 Posted in MedicalIbrahim, a 20-year-old Galilee Muslim whose failed circumcision two years earlier left him with too little penile skin to perform his matrimonial duties, was abandoned by his fiancee prior to their wedding. But plastic surgeon Prof. Yaron Har-Shai eventually enabled Ibrahim to get engaged to another woman by adapting – for the first time in the world – a technique used on hand and facial burns to rehabilitate his penis, restoring normal function.
Har-Shai and colleagues at Haifa’s Carmel Medical Center and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine have just published their report on the highly unusual case in the British Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery, which presents not only the details of the procedure but also ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos. The doctors’ careful search of the Medline database showed that the technique had not been used previously to correct such a problem.
The man, now 21, is due to wed a different woman who accepted his marriage proposal after hearing about the normal appearance and functioning of his penis. Upon hearing the news, the Carmel staff who treated him sent the couple a huge bouquet of flowers and wishes for good luck and many children.
Instead of undergoing a ritual circumcision at the conventional age for Muslims – 13 years – the man waited until 18, apparently because he comes from a secular family and didn’t think it was important, Har-Shai told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
The procedure was performed by an overzealous traditional practitioner, who botched the job. Instead of removing just the foreskin, he also cut off ventral penile skin, a complication that occurs in 0.2 percent of circumcisions.
Although able to have erections before the accident, the unfortunate man found that the error shortened his organ by causing the development of scar tissue that prevented the skin from expanding with increased blood supply. Skin webbing developed from the sub-coronal groove to the anterior scrotal base. Intercourse was impossible, and when his first fiancee learned about his condition, the wedding was off.
An anesthesiologist who knew the family turned to Har-Shai, a Technion graduate who worked at Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center until he was invited to head the plastic surgery department at Carmel.
Editor’s note:
Here we go again, another botch job. If it is this easy to remove too much from an adult’s penis, imagine how easily it is to remove too much from an infant’s penis. However restoring normal function to a penis without a foreskin is only possible with foreskin restoration. Since normal function requires a whole, normal penis, it is not possible for a circumcised penis to have normal function.
Another botched circumcision from China (warning-graphic)
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