Penile Surgery: Scars, Scares -- For Some, Organ Enlargement Leads To Deformity, Lawsuits

LOS ANGELES - Ron Nance, a 47-year-old divorced carpenter, wishes he had never met the doctor who promised him a larger penis.

Surgery left Nance infected, racked with pain, impotent and eventually abandoned by the woman he loved.

When Nance, who lives in Capitola, Calif., first read a newspaper ad touting the successes of Dr. Melvyn Rosenstein and his practice in Culver City, Calif., he thought he'd found "the answer to my insecurity problem."

Like many of the estimated 10,000 Americans who have undergone cosmetic penile enlargements, his concern wasn't sexual performance, but how he measured up - or appeared to measure up - to other men.

Despite his girlfriend's protestations, Nance felt further compelled by what he heard from a San Francisco sales representative for Rosenstein, the nation's busiest penile-enlargement practitioner.

"He assured me that it was a relatively painless procedure, so fine-tuned that all the results were 100 percent and that I would be back to work in three days and back jogging in a couple of weeks and - as he said - `back in the saddle in a month,' " Nance recalls.

So Nance took money he'd been saving for a new truck and put $5,900 cash down on the combined lengthening and widening surgery.

"It only took an hour to mess my life up," said Nance, now scarred "like someone who stepped on a land mine" and unable to engage in sex. After corrective surgery, he's smaller than before - and broke.

Like the 5,000 patients Rosenstein has operated on since 1991, Nance forked over his own money for an experimental operation rarely covered by insurance.

At least 30 doctors around the country, many in Southern California, perform the increasingly popular penile augmentations, often in private operating rooms not affiliated with established hospitals.

The practitioners place ads in newspaper sports pages, right there with other ads appealing to men - for strip joints, hair-restoration centers and fast cars.

Rosenstein's media blitz also included television infomercials and an Internet site that proclaimed his patients gained an average of 1.5 to 2 inches in length and 30 percent to 50 percent in circumference.

Yet many men who thought a scalpel could give them a larger penis have only scars to show for it - both physical and mental.

Tony, a 35-year-old Arizona man who agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity, says the procedure and corrective operations left 12.5 inches of unsightly scars and ruined his dating life.

"If I get into situations where it's going to get (sexual), I bow out as fast as I can," Tony said. "It's very noticeable, and women do say something about it," he said.

The divorced dad says he has even considered suicide, as have others.

More than 50 men dissatisfied with Rosenstein's work have sought the services of attorneys, complaining about numbness, deformity and dysfunction.

Although the medical community was aware of the potential dangers of such surgery, word never reached Rosenstein's patients, who paid their $5,900 before ever seeing the doctor.

Although Rosenstein has more cases pending against him than any other penile-enlargement surgeon, urologists have seen complications from other doctors' work. But tracking poor results can be difficult.

Most men are too embarrassed to admit having surgery to relieve a self-esteem problem that many doctors say might be better addressed through psychotherapy.

Dr. Jack McAninch, chief of urology at San Francisco General Hospital and a urology professor at the University of California, San Francisco, has developed a reputation for repairing results gone awry.

"The deformities are significant. The scarring that results is significant," says McAninch, incoming president of the American Urological Association.