A man in Sweden found out the hard way that penile surgeries can be fatal.
While undergoing phalloplasty, or penile elongation and girth enhancement, the 30-year-old patient suddenly went into cardiac arrest, New York Post reports. The man had no prior medical conditions aside from mild asthma. Doctors tried to revive him when he was rushed to the emergency room, but efforts were futile and he died shortly after the procedure.
An autopsy conducted on the man revealed that his heart was slightly enlarged, but he was otherwise normal. The cause of death was ascribed to a pulmonary fat embolism.
Standard penile procedures are done by taking fat cells from other parts of the body through liposuction. These fat cells are then injected into the penis. In this case, the fat was taken from the patient’s abdomen.
Phalloplasty has become quite common, but researchers continue to warn that the procedure always carries risks. Studies have shown that on average, 25% of men who have undergone the procedure suffered one or more serious complications as a result. These include blood clots, shortage of blood supply, infections, bruises, deaths of parts of the penis or complete loss of the phallus. There have likewise been cases where patients have died from gluteal lipoinjection, or the procedure of transferring fat to a person’s buttocks.
The Journal of Forensic Sciences reports, “This is the first described case where a seemingly simple and safe procedure of a penis enlargement by autologous fat transfer caused sudden death in a healthy young man. Perhaps the risk of fat embolisation is higher when pretraumatized tissue is subjected to fat injection, like in this case, where a penis elongation by loosening of a penile ligament was performed before the fat injection.”
The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery states that approximately 8,400 penis enlargement operations take place around the world yearly.
