NORM does not recommend surgical foreskin restoration because the results are often poor and the cost is high (at least several thousand dollars). Additionally there are risks associated with yet another surgery to the penis as well as the time required to recover from the surgery. Though several methods of surgical restoration have been proposed there is no standardized procedure and all procedures take or pull skin from elsewhere on the body as opposed to non-surgical restoration which actually grows new shaft skin.
Although we may all want our foreskin back right now it is not possible at this time. Currently the least intrusive, least risky and most successful method of foreskin restoration is not surgery but skin expansion. While it may take longer than surgical techniques it is nearly always successful without the risk of scars and with minimal expense.
In the future it may be possible to regenerate a foreskin and attach it surgically. While it will likely be expensive and require surgery it holds the promise of a more complete and natural restoration. To learn more visit the Foregen website. Given the long timelines inherent in medical research and making new procedures available to consumers we recommend those interested in restoring their foreskin start non-surgical foreskin restoration now rather than wait for a surgical option to become available.
While we have heard from the occasional man who has expressed satisfaction with his surgical restoration we still feel it is a very risky procedure that often has a poor outcome. To illustrate this fact here are several stories of what can go wrong when surgery is involved. While these may be worse case scenarios they do illustrate the physical, emotional and financial risks of surgical restorations.
One doctor who has performed several surgical restorations is Dr. Greer. Like most doctors the restorations are only 60-70% successful and the cost for most men is prohibitive. He has charged anywhere from ten to fifty thousand dollars for a full restoration procedure and it takes three or more surgeries to complete the restoration. The first step is denuding of the shaft and insertion through the scrotal tissue. Then six months later there is another surgery followed a final touch up surgery six months after that . Then it might be necessary to have electrolysis to remove unwanted hairs from the scrotal and pubic skin that has been moved up the shaft to create the foreskin. Dr. Greer, who is the preeminent surgeon in this field, has recently recommend that men use tissue expansion by stretching. He says that it is the most successful method of restoration and suggests that it should be used by everyone that can before considering surgery.
As a second example of what can go wrong there was a man who had a similar surgery performed by a doctor in LA. One of the skin grafts died and fell off after six months. After another six months another skin graft died and fell off. Now he is minus a lot of skin and over ten thousands dollars. The doctor was sued and is no longer able to practice medicine but the man is left with a flap of skin that does not function as a foreskin. He is now looking for another surgeon to fix the remaining flap of skin that was grafted on by surgery. He will have many scars and no one knows what the end result will be. Perhaps if he had started stretching and kept it up faithfully he would now have considerable extra skin, but instead he is minus quite a lot of skin and a lot of money.
A third case of a surgical restoration gone wrong is that of a man in England who had the Pryor method done. This method uses some of the scrotal and shaft tissue in an attempt to restore the foreskin. The first surgery attempt went gangrenous. The doctor tried a second time and it again went gangrenous and sloughed off. He now has a completely denuded corpus cavernosa that has no shaft covering at all. He has filed suit and it settled out of court for 800,000 pounds. Needless to say, he is devastated both physically and emotionally.
Finally, in San Francisco there was a young man who has had 9 surgeries, with the attending multitude of scars, and he still does not have the foreskin he wants. He spent three years and is still looking for a plastic surgeon to try to finish what the urological surgeon could not successfully create – a working foreskin. The cost so far: over $250,000 dollars.