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Every so often, Dr. Laurence Levine fields a phone call from a circumcised man desperate to restore his penis to its original glory.
Levine, a board-certified urologic surgeon in Chicago, said he does a “fair amount of penile cosmetic surgery,” but he doesn’t replace foreskin lost to circumcision.
“A man should be happy … with the appearance of their penis,” Levine, a professor of urology at Rush University Medical Center, told The Post.
“It’s just that I haven’t seen a technique that really works,” he added, “and I also have concerns about this patient population in terms of their expectations [of] what can be done, which is why I really haven’t engaged in the process.”
This patient population — a growing group known as “restorers” — were featured in a New York magazine article last week that highlighted their obsessive struggle to improve sexual sensation and feel “whole” again.
Medical experts, meanwhile, warn that DIY and surgical foreskin techniques are often untested, potentially dangerous and may lead to devastating results.
‘Potential downsides’ to surgery
Circumcision is the surgical removal of the foreskin from the penis, leaving the glans or head permanently exposed.
It’s usually performed on newborns or children for religious, cultural, familial or hygiene reasons.
While circumcision is a very common procedure, foreskin replacement surgery is not. In fact, men looking to “reverse” their circumcision might be hard-pressed to find a doctor in the US willing to do the operation.
Surgery generally involves taking skin from other body parts and grafting it onto the penis. A urologist in Germany told New York that he retrieves skin from the scrotum to cover the glans in two hour-long procedures that cost around $5,700 overall.
A 30-year-old man who dropped $25,000 for surgery in California to gain 17 millimeters of foreskin revealed to New York that he cried after sex because he was so thrilled with the results.
Others might not be as pumped by the effects.
Levine said there are “substantial potential downsides” to surgery, like tissue loss, wound healing issues, infection, hypersensitivity and scarring of the skin around the head, which can lead to hygiene-related struggles.
Dr. Fenwa Milhouse — a board-certified, fellowship-trained urologist in Chicago — pointed out that the foreskin isn’t really being restored, anyway.
“What’s gone is gone,” Milhouse, co-founder and co-owner of Down There Urology, told The Post.
“That area is called the prepuce in medicine, and it covers the head of the penis, and it’s distinctly different in urology from the shaft skin.”
Nonsurgical devices ‘can cause real harm’
DIY foreskin renewal is actually more popular, less expensive and potentially less risky than surgery.
It’s a simple concept — the skin on the shaft is gently and gradually stretched until it covers the head of the penis.
Men can grab inflation or tugging devices online that provide consistent and temperate tension for stretching — or they can take matters into their own hands.
One major drawback is that it can take months, even years, to see real progress.
Milhouse said she hasn’t performed foreskin grafting, but she did treat a patient who used one of these devices before coming to her to taper his foreskin for a more natural look.
“This guy replaced his foreskin with shaft skin by [applying] tension with one of these devices,” she explained. “But it didn’t look completely like natural foreskin because it was loose, so I tapered it to make it look more natural.”
Milhouse said the patient — who is “in it for the long haul” — planned to resume the tension devices and return to her office for more revisions.
These contraptions are not without potential pitfalls, said Dr. Jamin Brahmbhatt, a urologist at Orlando Health.
“Some devices, especially homemade devices or improperly sized rings, can cause real harm, including swelling, scarring, numbness or potentially compromising blood flow to the head of the penis,” he told The Post.
“If anyone is doing this, they should stop and get evaluated if they develop pain, bruising, skin tearing,
swelling, scarring, color changes, numbness or changes in sensation.”
‘Natural look’ may not be attainable
There’s a good chance that restorers will go to great lengths to reshape their penis, only to be left dissatisfied.
“The patient may be able to gradually expand skin to cover more of the head of the penis, but they cannot recreate the original foreskin,” Brahmbhatt said.
“The original nerve pattern, mucosal tissue, ridged band and frenulum are not restored in the same way.”
Plus, the skin may not look natural if there was uneven stretching or a color mismatch between the existing and newly grafted skin. There could also be scarring from surgery.
In the end, restorers may be forever climbing an endless mountain.
“I’ve really sort of found from my early experiences in dealing with these guys that it’s very hard to make them happy because you never really get quite the natural look that they expect to get,” Levine said. “Their ego ideal and their expectations are much more than … what is typically attainable.”
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