Maria Mosley, who graduated from SIU School of Medicine Saturday, will train in emergency medicine at New York Public Hospital-Columbia & Cornell-New York
By Stephanie Pappas
A baby boy born with three penises is the first-ever reported case of human triphallia, a condition in which three phalluses form during embryonic development.
The child, first seen by doctors as a 3-month-old, was from Duhok, Iraq. He underwent surgery to remove two of the phalluses, which were small projections at the base of the penis and scrotum. The third phallus was in the usual location. According to a case study published in the International Journal of Surgery Case Reports in November, the boy was doing well at a follow-up visit a year after surgery.
Extra, or “supernumerary” penises are a rare congenital condition, occurring only once every 5 million to 6 million live births, according to the researchers. The level of development of these extra phalluses differs in different individuals. In the case of the child in Iraq, the two additional penises contained the erectile tissue, called corpus cavernosum, which becomes engorged with blood during a
A boy born with three penises is the first-ever reported case of human triphallia, a condition in which three phalluses form during embryonic development.