Anybody think that advances are near?

[steel86man]

My apologies if this is a repeat question. I haven't been on in a long time because I lost my password. Anyways, I was wondering people's thoughts as to how far out/how realistic it is to think that bottom surgery advances are? A few months back I saw a story about a penile transplant on a cis man and he and the doctors said everything was functioning fine.

Also if I were to get bottom surgery before anything new were to be approved, how likely is it that I could be a candidate for something like a transplant (if that were the route in which bottom surgery went)?

Sorry for all the what ifs. I'm just don't really have anybody else I can talk to about this who might have some sense of an idea. Also who understands my extreme bottom dysphoria.

[Dena]

Often with transplants today one needs to wait years for availability and a tissue match. I have seen first hand what the anti rejection drugs do to a person so while a transplant is possible today, I think it's unlikely it would be standard treatment for a long time. The only hope would be to grow the organ in a lab so rejection isn't an issue and with the priority on life saving organs, I suspect the bottom end would be 10-20 years before transplants would be practical for FTM usage.

[steel86man]

Often with transplants today one needs to wait years for availability and a tissue match. I have seen first hand what the anti rejection drugs do to a person so while a transplant is possible today, I think it's unlikely it would be standard treatment for a long time. The only hope would be to grow the organ in a lab so rejection isn't an issue and with the priority on life saving organs, I suspect the bottom end would be 10-20 years before transplants would be practical for FTM usage.

Thank, I appreciate your input. I wasn't thinking that long but that makes a lot of sense. I guess I'll just have to either listen to more Trans positive people who didn't have bottom surgery and/or still wait a few years to really think about what I'd like to do. Idk why I'm trying to figure out all the answers right now anyways, perhaps it's due to the fact that I feel I didn't do things soon enough like even accepting myself and starting T. Btw, your insight from my other post was really helpful and I've felt better so thank you again [emoji846]

[Arch]

Just an echo here; I wouldn't want to be on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of my life. I'd rather have some kind of penile clone, but that's even farther in the future than transplants, which I don't see as a good option anyway.

But then, I'm older and have faced the reality of my situation: The good alternatives will not happen in my lifetime, or at least, not soon enough. I don't want to be finally getting bottom surgery when I'm eighty or ninety or something. (Frankly, I think I'd be pretty effed up if I managed to live that long without doing something about my lower anatomy.)

[FTMax]

Transplants would not work for FTMs for a lot of reasons, the most important that you would need to take medication for the rest of your life to keep it from rejecting. We also don't have a lot of the internal structure that would be needed to make it sit right and function properly. So no, I do not think those are a viable option for us.

Phalloplasty has come a really long way in a very short amount of time, so I wouldn't knock it until you've looked into it more. It is about as close to natal as you're going to get if you have all the bells and whistles added. Having researched fairly extensively, the only advances I see coming in the future are improvements to erectile implants.

[Arch]

I'm not particularly impressed with the current state of erectile devices, so I don't plan to have one in my bottom surgery arc. Maybe later if things improve.

Gah, just thinking about bottom surgery gives me . . . the willies. Not ready to go there yet.

[beaver]

In terms of scientific advances, it is also likely that with lab-grown organs, focus will be on critical organs such as heart, lungs, liver, etc. Sadly genitals will be a little lower on the priority list, and with the complication in penile construction, I suspect it would be even more difficult.

On the other hand, I work at a lab that is 3D bio-printing organs. Nothing working on the human-scale yet, but it's promising technology. However, many organs are "printed" in multiple stages or "assembled" with different pieces. I wonder if the aesthetic result will be the same as phalloplasty. At least there wouldn't be donor sites and grafts, which is still a great improvement.

[AnxietyDisord3r]

Some group is hoping to 3D print bio ears in three years, and those are pretty complex structures. If anything, they could 3D print skin grafts and use that for phallo instead of taking skin off the body. There is a huge push (as far as I know) to create auto skin grafts for burn patients and the like.