Penis enlargement

Penis enlargement is the goal of a number of men dissatisfied for some reason with their penis size. Many commercial advertisements are sent via e-mail spam, direct mail, and in sexually-oriented magazines for penis enlargement aids. Many of these are provably misleading and in the case of e-mail spam, are perceived as disturbing or offensive by many users.

There are five known methods of penis enlargement.

The first, and the one usually referred to in advertising, is the penis pump. This is a cylinder that is fitted over the penis, and a pump creates a vacuum. These are valuable sexual aids for men who have difficulty achieving and maintaining an erection, as they can be used to achieve an erection, with a compressive ring on the base of the penis then maintaining the erection. However, their efficacy at increasing absolute penis size is marginal. They apparently have no measurable effect on shaft size. There may be some possibility of achieving a slight increase in size of the glans penis, but this may come at the cost of a roughened and coarsened texture of the mucous membrane covering the glans. Excessive use of these devices can also cause burst blood vessels.

The second method is an innovation in cosmetic surgery. This method takes fat cells from elsewhere in the body and injects them below the surface of the skin of the shaft of the penis to increase the thickness (but not length) of the penis. The penile shaft normally has little or no fat, and this method results in an unnatural appearance and feel, as well as risking radical shifting of the fat injected.

The third method is to cut the basal penile ligament, which can result in a lengthening of the penis by up to two inches in some individuals. However, it also means that, while the penis elongates and hardens with an erection, it can no longer become truly erect, but only hangs. The results of this surgery vary greatly between individuals, with some subjects reporting no measurable lengthening at all.

The fourth method is to replace the two corpus cavernosa with inflatable penile implants. This is performed primarily as a therapeutic surgery for men suffering from complete impotence; an implanted pump in the groin can be manipulated by hand to fill these cylinders from an implanted reservoir in order to achieve an erection. The replacement cylinders are normally sized to be direct replacements for the corpus cavernosa, but larger ones can be implanted. However, the result is an uncomfortable stretching of the other penile tissues which can have a number of complications.

The fifth method is penile transplant. With modern techniques and anti-rejection drugs, this certainly should be possible, but there has been no record of a successful attempt until very recently, when a rather odd situation occurred in which a penis was taken from a male infant with two penises and attached to another male infant lacking a penis. The overwhelming drawback to this method, apart from the necessity to ever after take anti-rejection drugs with their side effects and restrictions in lifestyle, is the unfortunate fact that, performed on an adult, the penis then is an organ dead to the touch, which largely negates its usefulness. The ultimate consequences of the first penis transplant noted above are still unknown.