A NEW surgical technique has proved successful in restoring sexual function in men left impotent after prostate surgery. In what is being hailed as breakthrough surgery, doctors restored a patient's ability to have normal sexual function by grafting a nerve salvaged from his ankle. Usually, doctors can preserve male sexual function after prostate surgery by saving the two nerves that carry signals to the penis to fill with blood, allowing erections. But if the cancer is too close to the nerves, one or both of them must be cut, often leaving patients impotent. The new approach uses a stretch of nerve removed from the ankle to fill in the gap left between the two severed ends of these nerves, which run next to the prostate gland.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men.