A Birmingham man, who was born with three penises, is only the second person to have been shown to have this rare deformity, doctors say.
Only one of the three was functional, according to doctors who published in a medical journal the extraordinarily rare case of a condition known as triphalia.
The other two were attached inside the skin of the scrotal sac, which houses the testicles.
The 78-year-old man’s condition was not discovered until he donated his body to science after his death.
It is believed that the man could have gone his entire life without being aware of his “remarkable anatomical variation.”
A Birmingham man, who was born with three penises, is only the second person to have been shown to have this rare deformity, doctors say.
Doctors at the University of Birmingham School of Medicine said one in five to six million children are born with more than one penis, and just over 100 cases of diphalia (two penises) have been recorded worldwide.
Doctors at the University of Birmingham School of Medicine said one in five to six million children are born with more than one penis, and just over 100 cases of diphalia (two penises) have been recorded worldwide.
But this man is only the second to suffer triphalia.
A case in India went viral in 2015, but experts couldn’t verify the story because it was never detailed in a medical journal.
The first case was confirmed in a 2020 report, when the unidentified boy from Duhok, Iraq, was just three months old.
Urologists discovered that none of the extra penises had a urethra, the tube through which urine passes, and decided surgery was the best option.
The Birmingham students made the new discovery while dissecting the body of the man who stood approximately six feet tall and was “of medium to large build.”
But they also discovered that the third penis had different anatomical characteristics than the first “functional” penis and the second, located in the skin of the scrotal sac.
The additional penis had no corpus spongiosum, spongy tissue mass, or urethra.
writing in the Medical Case Report MagazineDoctors said the man could have lived with “functional deficits” because of this.
This could have included urinary tract infections, erectile dysfunction or fertility problems.
Dyspareunia (long-lasting or recurring genital pain that occurs just before, during, or after sexual intercourse) may also have been a given problem.’the potential erection of the secondary and tertiary penises,” they added.
Scientists are still puzzled about the cause of supernumerary penises (the technical name for extra limbs), the first case of which was reported in the 17th century.
There is no known single risk factor, but it is thought to occur by chance when the genitals develop in the womb.
In almost all reported cases of supernumerary penis, surgeons surgically removed the extra penis.
