Trans woman, 57, burns own penis – forcing doctors to remove it and leave her with a 1cm stump
A trans woman deliberately burned her own penis in a desperate attempt to have it removed.
The 57-year-old, from Australia, was born male but felt she had been living in the wrong body.
The unknown woman did not seek medical attention until seven days after she suffered a self-inflicted chemical burn. Doctors who shared her story in a medical journal have not revealed how it happened.
Gender confirmation surgery, which may involve removing the penis, is not currently covered by Medicare, Australia’s national public health insurance.
Instead, patients must seek expensive private surgeries.
The 57-year-old from Australia survived the harrowing act of self-mutilation after feeling she had been living in the wrong body (stock)
While some local health authorities offer clinics that match patients with health care providers, they often have long waiting lists.
Trans women can undergo complicated surgeries to remove their genitals and replace them with an artificial vagina.
For trans men, such procedures may include surgical removal of the breasts and construction of a penis and scrotum.
To enrol Urology Case Reportsdoctors said the patient had been transferred to the Royal North Shore Hospital at St Leonards in Sydney, for an examination of urology and burns.
Medics found she had necrosis — dead body tissue — at the tip of the penis and burns, swelling, and redness along the penile shaft.
The date of the incident was not disclosed by medics in the report.
Prior to the injury, the patient had undergone androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), which reduces the levels of male hormones — androgens — produced by the testicles, which are responsible for the growth of facial and body hair and deepening of the voice.
However, she was unable to continue ADT after moving to the countryside.
Medics performed tests to examine the lining of her bladder, fitted her with a catheter — a tube used to drain urine from the bladder — and treated the wounds.
The results showed that the necrosis had not spread to the urethra and bladder.
However, more and more dead tissues were discovered when changing the patient’s dressings.
Medics noted that patients’ markers of inflammation — which detect inflammation in the body caused by many diseases, including infections — also increased, leaving them little choice but to perform an emergency partial penectomy.
This surgical technique – which is normally used in the treatment of penile cancer – removed the dead tissue and arose an opening for the urethra at the end of the penile stump of 1 cm that remained.
The team said they saved as much of the patient’s urethra as possible for any future sex surgeries.
The number of male to female procedures performed in the NHS vastly dwarfs the number of female to male operations
Procedures are being carried out on Britons who have lived for more than a year as their preferred gender identity and now want their physical appearance modified to match it
The woman was followed for eight days after surgery. She was subsequently discharged and referred to a transsurgery specialist.
No postoperative complications were recorded.
It’s because Australia faces a shortage of surgeons who perform lower body gender reassurance procedures.
No surgical college also offers formal training guidelines, forcing doctors to learn abroad.
Trans health advocates have labeled Medicare “lamentable” for failing to clarify which, if any, gender-affirming surgeries are eligible for government funding.
Even fully insured people are left out of pocket up to $20,000 (£10,500) for a vaginoplasty performed in Australia.
In the UK, transgender people can undergo surgery on the NHS to change parts of their bodies related to biological sex.
But they must have transitioned socially to their preferred sex for at least a year before they get a referral for surgery and there are long waits.
Those who go private pay between £10,000 and £20,000 for sex reassignment surgery in the UK, while it costs up to $75,000 (£60,000) in the US.
It comes as NHS figures obtained by MailOnline earlier this month show medics performed 355 sex reassignment procedures last year, the highest on record.
Nearly 97 percent of surgeries were for men transitioning to become women, the analysis of tens of millions of hospitalizations showed.
But the NHS Digital data, which spans almost 20 years, does not provide a breakdown by age of those undergoing the surgeries.
Waiting lists for such surgeries on the NHS are extreme, with campaign groups estimating that there are currently some 2,000 trans men waiting to have a phalloplasty, the surgical creation of a penis.
This is partly due to the complexity of such a difficult and specialist operation, with only a limited number of surgeons in the UK performing these procedures.