Loss of penile sensation after fat injection surgery + infection/scar — has anyone experienced something similar?

[bilaire56]

Hello everyone,

First, I want to say how happy I am that I found this forum. You can’t imagine how good it feels to finally see people having real discussions, sharing their experiences, and actually trying to help each other.

I wanted to share my full story because I have been dealing with this for almost 9 years and I am still trying to understand exactly what happened.

In 2016, I had my first penile enlargement surgery using autologous fat injection. They took fat from my thigh and injected it into my penis. Everything went very well. I had no infection, no major scar, and my sensation stayed completely normal.

About one year later, in 2017, I changed surgeons and had a second enlargement surgery. The goal was supposed to be basically the same thing: another fat injection.

But this time everything was different.

After the surgery, I had a large vertical suprapubic wound just above the base of my penis. The wound became infected and partially opened. I had to see a nurse regularly to clean and treat it.

It eventually healed, but I still have a very visible scar there today.

The biggest problem is that immediately after that second surgery, I noticed that my penis had lost a lot of sensation.

I told the surgeon at the time. He told me it was normal after surgery and that the sensation should return after a few months.

It never returned to normal.

Today I still have sensation. My penis is definitely not completely numb. But the sensation is much weaker than it was before the surgery, including in the glans.

It also changes. Some days it feels much better and almost normal, while other times the sensation feels extremely low.

The scar itself is almost numb, and something I find interesting is that the closer I get to the scar, the less sensation I seem to have.

When I have an erection and the area stretches, I can also sometimes feel a pulling discomfort around the scar.

My orgasm is also much weaker than before the surgery.

I still have morning erections around 4–5 times per week. I can get erections, have sex with my wife and ejaculate normally. But sometimes my erection becomes a little softer during sex and is not as reliable as before.

Another strange symptom is that if I ejaculate twice in the same day, my penis can start feeling painful afterward. The best way I can describe it is almost like the skin or nerves feel raw or scraped. It makes me not want to ejaculate again.

My libido also became much lower after the second surgery. Before that surgery I had spontaneous sexual thoughts and normal desire. Since then, my libido has been very low most of the time, although occasionally it comes back temporarily.

I also noticed a small change with urination. Before the surgery, when I wanted to pee, it would start immediately. Now sometimes I have to wait a few seconds before the urine starts, almost like something is slightly blocking it. It is not painful and it is not a major problem, but it definitely changed after the surgery.

I also do not know exactly what the second surgeon did. Because of the location of the suprapubic scar, I sometimes wonder if he also performed a suspensory ligament release, even though I did not specifically ask for one.

A few years later, I saw a urologist who performed an ultrasound. He told me everything looked normal and that he did not see anything alarming. His theory was that some of the injected fat might still be present and could possibly reduce sensation by creating an extra layer between the skin/tissues and the sensory structures.

Recently, I had another consultation with a reconstructive urologist.

He told me that there is unfortunately no simple surgery where he can just reconnect the nerves and guarantee that my original sensation will come back.

He prescribed:

Lyrica (pregabalin) 75 mg
Wellbutrin XL (bupropion) 150 mg

The idea is to try to improve the nerve-related symptoms and sexual sensation.

I am open to trying them, but I am still not completely convinced because, from my understanding, these medications may change how the nervous system processes sensation, but they do not necessarily fix the actual physical cause if there is scar tissue, fibrosis, adhesions or some kind of nerve compression.

He also requested a 3-Tesla MRI of the penis and pelvis, with and without contrast, to look specifically for things such as fibrosis/scar tissue around the base of the penis, the suspensory ligament area and the deeper penile structures.

I am going to do this MRI because right now my main goal is simply to understand what actually happened anatomically.

I have also heard people talk about shockwave therapy for penile sensation. I looked into it, but so far I honestly feel like a lot of it is marketing. I have not found convincing evidence that it restores sensation after this kind of surgical injury, and I have not found many real people saying it actually fixed this type of problem.

So I wanted to ask the people here:

Has anyone experienced reduced penile or glans sensation after penile enlargement, fat injection, infection, scar formation or another penile surgery?

Has anyone had scar tissue or fibrosis around the base of the penis that affected sensation?

Did anyone improve after scar revision, neurolysis, nerve treatment, medication, physical therapy or anything else?

And if anyone has dealt with something even remotely similar, I would really appreciate hearing what you found and what actually helped.

My main goal is to regain as much sensation as realistically possible.