--- title: Doctor Claims to Perform First Successful Penis Transplant description: The operation took 9 hours to perform canonical: https://time.com/3744186/south-africa-penis-transplant/ author: Sarah Begley article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-03-13T15:56:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T05:09:05.724Z article:section: Health og:title: Doctors claim world's first successful penis transplant og:description: "It's a massive breakthrough" og:url: https://time.com/3744186/south-africa-penis-transplant/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Doctors claim world's first successful penis transplant twitter:description: "It's a massive breakthrough" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # First Successful Penis Transplant 'Massive Breakthrough', Doctors Say > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Mar 13, 2015 3:56 PM UTC by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Mar 13, 2015 3:56 PM UTC A 21-year-old man has received the world’s [first successful penile transplant](http://www.sun.ac.za/english/Lists/news/DispForm.aspx?ID=2328), surgeons say. The man, whose name was not revealed for privacy reasons, had his organ amputated three years ago after a circumcision went wrong. Doctors at Stellenbosch University and Tygerberg Hospital in South Africa operated for nine hours in December, and just a few months later they say he’s already regained full function in the transplanted organ —a much faster recovery than they had hoped for. “It’s a massive breakthrough. We’ve proved that it can be done – we can give someone an organ that is just as good as the one that he had,” Prof Frank Graewe, head of the Division of Plastic Reconstructive Surgery at Stellenbosch University, said. “It was a privilege to be part of this first successful penis transplant in the world.” While at least one other attempt has been made at penile transplant, the surgeons say this is the first such operation to succeed. In their announcement, the doctors emphasized the psychological trauma of penile amputation, a problem they say is particularly acute in South Africa. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3744186/south-africa-penis-transplant/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3744186/south-africa-penis-transplant/"},"headline":"First Successful Penis Transplant 'Massive Breakthrough', Doctors Say","datePublished":"2015-03-13T15:56:34.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T05:09:05.724Z","description":"The operation took 9 hours to perform","url":"https://time.com/3744186/south-africa-penis-transplant/","keywords":["medicine","South Africa","Surgery"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sarah Begley","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/medicine/","name":"medicine"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3744186/south-africa-penis-transplant/","name":"First Successful Penis Transplant 'Massive Breakthrough', Doctors Say"}}]}] ```