Odisha docs perform rare sex reassignment surgery

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Cuttack, Aug 9:

Doctors at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Post Graduate Institute of Paediatrics (Sishu Bhawan) at Cuttack in Odisha performed a rare sex reassignment surgery on a two-year-old child on Friday evening.

According to reports, an infant from Nayagarh area had shown conflicting signs of sex at its birth. Though the child had shown male features, its sex was that of a female. Worried family members had taken the child to the Sishu Bhawan at Cuttack recently where the doctors had advised them for a sex reassignment on the two-year old child.

Following the advice of the doctors, the family members admitted the child at Sishu Bhawan on August 7.

A team of four doctors—Dr PK Jena, the leader of the team and Dr Abinash Panda, Dr Mahadev and Dr Nihar Senapati— performed a two-hour surgery on the child last evening.

Describing the surgery as successful, Dr Jena said this was first ever such surgery at Sishu Bhawan.

“The condition of the child is stable and he would completely recover as a male child after undergoing treatment for a few days,” he said.
“The patient came with ambiguous genitalia. After investigations, we found that the private parts of the child had not developed properly due to lower levels of male hormones. Though it appeared like a female sex organ, the child was actually a boy,” he added.

Claiming that such symptoms are not new, Dr. Jena said that the child, after its birth, had developed disorder of sex development (DSD). As a result, though the child was growing as a male, his sex was like that of a female. He said the ultrasound report showed that the child had no female sex organ inside the body.

“The child would need to undergo a urethral surgery after one year to complete the process,” he added.