Researchers discover man with 3 penises: Triphallia, a rare congenital anomaly describing the presence of 3 distinct penile shafts, has been reported only once in the literature. The paper is the first time the internal anatomy has been described in detail through post-mortem dissection.

I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

Triphallia: the first cadaveric description of internal penile triplication: a case report

https://jmedicalcasereports.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13256-024-04751-5

From the linked article:

A man with three penises has been discovered in only the second ever documented case of the ultra-rare birth defect.

Student researchers at the University of Birmingham Medical School in the UK made the “serendipitous discovery” while dissecting the donated body of a 78-year-old man — who may have gone his whole life without being aware of his “remarkable anatomical variation”.

Duplicate penises, or diphallia, is an extremely rare congenital anomaly thought to affect one in every five to six million people, with only around 100 cases reported in the medical literature.

“Triphallia, a rare congenital anomaly describing the presence of three distinct penile shafts, has been reported only once in the literature,” the authors wrote in the Journal of Medical Case Reports this month.

“These penile morphological abnormalities may not have been identified during his life. However, he may have lived with functional deficits due to the abnormal anatomy of the region, which may include urinary tract infections, erectile dysfunction or fertility issues.”

The paper represents the first time the internal anatomy of the birth defect has been described in detail through post-mortem dissection — the first ever case of triphallia, documented in 2020, was in a newborn baby.

The patient, a white male around six feet tall, appeared to have normal genitalia on external examination, but dissection revealed “two small supernumerary penises … concealed within the scrotal sac”.