Placenta wrap speeds erection recovery after prostate surgery — SkimNews
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- Sanjay Razdan at HCA Florida Kendall Hospital in Miami wrapped cavernous nerves with 4-by-6-centimetre dried amniotic membrane sheets during 2,560 radical prostatectomies between 2014 and 2024, an approach he devised after hearing neurosurgeon colleagues use the membranes to aid nerve healing.
- Men who received the placenta wrap achieved their first erection an average of 7 days after surgery, compared with 14 days for 1,495 men operated on by the same surgeon before 2014.
- At 3 months post-surgery, 75% of men with the wraps had erections "sufficient for penetration," versus 60% in the comparison group.
- Shirin Razdan, Sanjay's daughter and a colleague at HCA Florida Kendall, said the sheets come from placentas donated after Caesarean sections, then dried, sterilised and packaged by companies into standard sizes — and likened wetting and wrapping them to moistening dried seaweed around sushi.
- After an average 8-year follow-up, the study found no difference in cancer outcomes between the two groups, addressing a theoretical concern that growth factor-rich membranes might fuel tumor regrowth.
- Arthur Burnett at Johns Hopkins Medicine called the results encouraging but said randomized clinical trials are required to confirm the effect, adding: "I'm pleased to see that they're trying to think outside the box here, but nobody else is doing this routinely yet."
- Inspired by her father's data, Shirin Razdan now uses the wraps in her own prostatectomies and is trialing them in surgeries for Peyronie's disease, where scar tissue causes painful, curved erections.
Why it matters: For the tens of thousands of men who undergo radical prostatectomy each year and face prolonged erectile dysfunction, a low-cost 4-by-6 cm sheet of donated placenta could halve recovery time and lift the 3-month potency rate from 60% to 75%. The catch: this is a retrospective review of one surgeon's patients, not a randomized trial, and Johns Hopkins's Burnett is right that the technique won't enter the standard playbook until RCTs confirm it. The 8-year cancer follow-up showing no tumor recurrence is what makes that trial worth running.
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