Talking about occult penis

  In our clinic, we often have parents bring their children for examination, saying that the child’s penis is short, the penis has not grown with age since birth, and when urinating or before waking up in the morning, you can see a little penis. When we examine the child’s penis carefully, we can only see a small pagoda. Holding the penis with our hands while pushing back the skin around it, we can show a normal penis body, but when we let go, it is still a pagoda-shaped penis.  There is a report of more than 5,000 cases of adolescent external genitalia investigation in China, and the prevalence rate is 6.7 per 1,000. This kind of deformity has certain special features in diagnosis and treatment, such as lack of knowledge about it and rash treatment, such as wrongly blaming the cause of occult penis on circumcision, thinking that circumcision can make the penis revealed. On the contrary, circumcision is contraindicated in children with this condition. This can make the corrective surgery complicated and difficult later on. Some children have a normal penis appearance in infancy, and as they become obese, a large amount of fat accumulates around the lower abdomen and pubic bone, which also buries the penis. These children are obese, often weighing more than 20% of the normal standard, and careful examination reveals normal penile corpus cavernosum and penile skin attachment, normal development, and no prepuce present. In fact, this is a kind of pseudo-incognito penis. It is very important to distinguish between the above two cases. Children with pseudohypospadias can naturally return to a normal state after they mature and lose weight, so they do not need surgical treatment. The treatment for occult penis is completely different, and penile lengthening surgery should be done at the right time, otherwise it will definitely affect the penis development of the sick child and cause physiological and psychological obstacles. The timing of the surgery should be chosen before school age.