Surgeons transplant testicle from one identical twin to the other

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy A 36-year-old man born without testicles received one transplanted from his identical twin brother in a six-hour operation performed in Belgrade, Serbia, by an international team of surgeons. The surgery was intended to give the recipient more stable levels of the male hormone testosterone than injections could provide, to make his genitals more natural and more comfortable, and to enable him to father children, said Dr Dicken Ko, a transplant surgeon and urology professor at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, who flew to Belgrade to help with the procedure. Mr Bojovic said that after the penis transplant, the surgical team received enquiries from people undergoing female-to-male sex reassignment who wondered if they might receive transplants instead of the usual surgery, which creates a penis from the patient’s own tissue. “They say, ‘If immunosuppression is getting safer, I don’t want to use a big piece of tissue from my forearm or thigh or back for something that looks like phallus but isn’t.’” He added that in patients having male-to-female reassignment surgery, the penis and testicles that were surgically removed are discarded but in theory could be used for transplants.