Cosmetic procedures amongst men are on the rise and according to the British College of Aesthetic Medicine, men accounted for 16% of patients in 2022, up from 10% in 2021.
And amongst the jaw fillers, hairline and leg lengthening surgeries, penis enlargement is also gaining popularity.
The operation is now the second most popular surgery for men, with a YouGov poll showing that 25% of men would opt for the operation if money was no object.
In 2015, there were 15,000 penis enlargement surgeries a year, up from 1000 in 2011, so the number of surgeries in 2023 is thought to be far higher.
But the invasive treatment is leaving some men “disfigured”, according to a deep dive report by Pro Publica.
One man, Mick (name changed to protect his anonymity), wanted a bigger penis because he believed it “would allow him to look in the mirror and feel satisfied.”
He enquired with Beverly Hills-based urologist, James Elist — described by TMZ as “the Thomas Edison of penis surgery” — who invented the FDA-approved device called the Penuma (an acronym for ‘Penis New Man’).
It’s a silicone device that’s implanted through an incision in the shaft of the penis and is apparently reversible – and it’s not what you describe as being very small or discrete, we’ll put it that way.
Mick was told the operation would cost $15,000 and was signed up after a lightning-quick five-minute consultation. The surgery took place that same day.
The report says that he spent the next five days on his back in the motel room he rented, with his penis wrapped in gauze. “Morning erections were excruciating,” he said.
He could only pee by leaning over the bathtub and when he changed the gauze, he started to see the corners of the implant sticking out under the skin. Ouch.
It was soon after this that he started to lose sensation completely. “I’m so sorry for another email,” he wrote to the clinic in a third complaint, “but I am freaking out about the fact I have zero sensitivity in my penis!”
One of the worst parts of Mick’s story is that he ironically lost length in his efforts to enlarge his penis.
According to Penuma’s website, the most commonly seen complications from the implant include infection, detached sutures, and seroma or fluid buildup.
In some of these cases, the implant needs to be removed.
There have been other reported cases of penis enlargement surgeries causing implications — even death.
In 2019, 65-year-old diamond dealer Ehud Arye Laniad died in a Paris clinic after a substance was injected into his penis in an effort to make it larger.
And in 2017, a 30-year-old man in Sweden died of a heart attack after undergoing penile elongation and penile enlargement surgery, often carried out in the same procedure, which is typically done by extracting unwanted fat cells from places such as the belly or the thighs and injected into the penis — in much the same way that some BBLs are.
How much length can the surgery add?
According to Maurizio and Roberto Viel, surgeons (who happen to also be twins) working out of Dubai and London, who perform over 400 penis resizing ops a year, “the lengthening operation allows you to only extend a penis by two inches at most.
“If a surgeon promises you more, they are misleading you. But you can technically make it as thick as you want,” they say.
However, increasing the girth too much can cause the penis to become too heavy, and causes erectile problems later in life. They say it needs to be done in moderation.
Their operation works by severing a ligament in the penis, allowing it to ‘hang’ lower. I don’t know about you, but I just physically shuddered writing that.
Maybe it’s time we extended (no pun intended) our love for short kings (again, no pun intended), not only when it comes to height, but to also include penis length.
After all, it’s not about the size of the boat, but the motion in the ocean. Wink, wink.