Doctors in Udaipur treating a 22-year-old for undescended testicles (when testes fail to drop into the scrotum) were stunned to find female reproductive organs in his abdomen.
Surgeons successfully removed a uterus, ovaries and cervix from the man, who does not want to be named.
He is recovering from the surgery and now wants to get married.
“It was a first such surgery for me as only around 400 such cases are recorded in medical history. As a gynae-surgeon, I know a woman’s body structure and the placement of the organs in it, but here the challenge was removing a womb from a man’s body,” said senior gynaecologist Dr Shilpa Goyal.
She, along with urologist Dr Manish Bhatt, performed the surgery at GBH American Hospital on Wednesday.
The man was suffering from Persistent Müllerian Duct Syndrome (PMDS), a rare genetic disorder of sexual development.
Men with this disorder have both male and female reproductive organs because the Müllerian duct, from which uterus and fallopian tubes are derived during development of the foetus, fails to break down during early development in the womb. The affected men have the normal male chromosomes (46, XY) and external male genitalia.
Undescended testes and fleshy hernia are usually the first signs of the disorder, with the uterus and
fallopian tubes usually being discovered during treatment. “It’s usually diagnosed in people aged
18 months to 29 years,” said Dr Shilpa.
Undescended testes and fleshy hernia are usually the first signs of the disorder, with the uterus and
fallopian tubes usually being discovered during treatment. “It’s usually diagnosed in people aged
18 months to 29 years,” said Dr Shilpa.
The man’s parents knew about his undescended testicles since his birth but went to get the condition treated now that they plan to get him married.