Boy, 2, born with THREE penises due to incredibly rare condition has surgery to remove the extra appendages

August 25, 2015  19:58

An Indian boy born with three penises has undergone pioneering surgery to correct the incredibly rare abnormality.

The two-year-old suffers from diphallia, a condition where a man is born with two penises, doctors claim.

The boy, who remains unidentified also had another undeveloped penis, described as a 'soft, bony mass', Daily News and Analysis (DNA) reports.

He was only able to pass urine through one of them.

In addition, after he was born doctors discovered he had no anus.

At the time, doctors in his home state performed a procedure known as a colostomy, in which they made an incision in his stomach to let his excrement pass out through a tube.

Last month, his mother brought him to Mumbai to undergo a six-hour operation to remove the extraneous appendages.

The complex operation was carried out in the city's Sion hospital.

Only two of the penises had erectile tissue.

'There was a huge soft bony mass and tissue to which the penises were attached,' added Dr Vishesh Dixit, a paediatric surgeon at Sion hospital.

The doctors extracted the mass and fused the two penises into one.

'The two functional penises were fused into one, by wrapping a mass of skin around them,' Dr Dixit continued.

Then, an anus was created through the boy's rectum so he could pass excrement normally, he added.

At the end of August, after the new anus doctors have created has healed, the boy will be taken for a second surgery to close the incision in his stomach.

Doctors said the boy will be able to have sex normally and his fertility will not be affected as an adult.

'We want our boy to lead a normal life, and are grateful to the doctors who have conducted a successful surgery,' boy's uncle told DNA journalists.

Diphallia is incredbuly rare, affecting only one in every five to six million births, according to the Iranian Journal of Paediatrics.

Only a hundred or so cases have been recorded in the medical literature since 1609. 

In normally-developing foetal tissue, the matter that will turn into the penis and rectum separates.

Diphallia is thought to occur when injury, stress, or a malfunctioning gene hampers this process, resulting in an abornmality.

It is normally accompanied by other congenital abnormalities. 

As each case of diphallia is different, treatments are normally tailored to the individual patient.

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