Besides length, there is research on width. One of the first surgeons to experiment with penis widening was Ricardo Samitier, a Miami surgeon who was doing lip enlargements before focusing his skills on penises. The earliest technique, and one still used by many surgeons, is to liposuction fat from another part of the body and inject it underneath the skin of the penis. The problem with this method is that the fat can lump together or migrate to the middle, creating a football-shaped penis that is narrow at the ends and wide in the middle. During sex, the fat can also get pushed down to the base of the shaft and sometimes into the scrotum.
Some surgeons say they can avoid the pitfalls of fat injections with dermal fat grafts.
Two long, narrow steaks of flesh are removed from either the patient's abdomen or underneath his buttocks. The two strips are sewn together. The flesh, about a half-inch thick and the color of processed meat, is then stuffed underneath the skin from an incision near the penis head. Surgeons who use fat grafts say they create a smoother penis than fat injections, but they can leave thick scars on the penis and the donor sites. The latest method, favored by Whitehead, is to use tissue harvested from cadavers.