Happiness a bit of skin-and-rib

Press, 22 August 1987, Page 23

Happiness a bit of skin-and-rib

Khalid Mamood is a happy man. Chinese surgeons have made him a new penis, writes Jonathan Mirsky of the London “Observer.”

Mamood, a Pakistani, was “miserable. and embarrassed,” according to a recent report from the Chinese news service Xinhua, after an industrial accident resulted in the loss of his penis. Pakistani surgeons were unable to sew it back on.

The desperate Mamood fles to Shanghai to consult Professor

Chang Tisheng, a world-famous plastic surgeon, who since 1982 has pioneered the technique called “one-stage reconstruction of the penis.” A surgical team at Shanghai’s No. 2 medical university used some of Mamood’s skin and a bit of his rib to construct a new penis and successfully sewed it on.

The Chinese report says that within two weeks the Pakistani had “regained the function of his penis.” Surgeons in Professor Chang’s unit have performed 50 such

operations since 1982 on Chinese and foreign patients, 98 per cent of whom pronounced the operation a complete success. The surgeons have also operated successfully on men born without penises.

According to the Shanghai report, most of the men who receive surgery are able to conceive. The surgeons have received a photograph of one former patient’s baby girl.

Chang, aged 71, American-trained in the 19405,

is understandably a famous man for his plastic and microsurgical techniques. He has been visited by 20 specialists from abroad who study his procedures which include the “one-stage” repair of defective eyelids.

In 1958, the professor received world-wide attention for saving the life of a steelworker badly burned by molten steel, and in 1966 he replaced a finger which had been dot off 36 hours earlier.