First U.S. penis transplants planned to help wounded vets

The first penis transplant in the United States is set to take place within the next year.

Surgeons from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine -- which has an active hand and face transplant program -- say the recipient will be a young soldier injured in a bomb blast in Afghanistan.

"We want to continue to expand the field into areas that are not easy to reconstruct using conventional methods," Dr. Damon Cooney, assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery and co-clinical director of the penile transplant program at Johns Hopkins, told CBS News. "The more and more interactions we've had with the military, the more we came to find out that although people aren't talking about it much, genital injuries are a much bigger problem for a lot of people."

The organ for the procedure will come from a deceased donor. Doctors say they expect it to start functioning in matter of months -- meaning the development of urinary function, sensation, and eventually the ability to have sex. Plans for the surgery were first reported in The New York Times.

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