Diabetic Sues Doctor After His Infected Penis Is Amputated

Enrique Milla had a penile implant to treat his erectile dysfunction.

ByABC News
May 17, 2012, 1:54 PM

May 17, 2012— -- A man who elected to have a penile implant in a Florida hospital is now suing his doctor after a post-surgical infection resulted in the amputation of his organ.

Enrique Milla, 65, who was reportedly deported from the United States last year back to his native Peru, has been testifying in court via Skype that the medical procedure robbed him of his dignity and manhood.

In a medical malpractice trial that began this week, Milla claims that his doctors should have known that he was not a good candidate for the procedure because of his diabetes and high blood pressure.

"This has been devastating, painful and embarrassing," said Milla's attorney, Spencer Aronfeld of Coral Gables, according to ABC's affiliate WPLG.

Milla alleges that his anesthesiologist Dr. Laurentiu Boeru "failed to evaluate properly the risks of this procedure." He first filed the lawsuit in 2009, naming Boeru and Dr. Paul Perito, the urologist who performed the surgery.

According to the Miami Herald, which obtained records that are not publicly available, Perito settled the case out of court.

"At the end of the day, he has to sit down to pee through a tube," Aronfeld told the Herald.

Penile implant surgery is most commonly performed after all other treatments for erectile dysfunction have failed. It is also used to treat some cases of Peyronie's disease, a condition that causes scarring inside the penis, leading to bent, painful erections.

Implant surgery comes with a risk of infection, which can occur at any time after surgery -- in rare cases, even years later, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Milla suffered from a number of medical conditions, including erectile dysfunction, according to court records. Milla, who had lived in Miami for 40 years working in a medical supply business, received the surgery in 2007 at Coral Gables Hospital.

"He didn't do this to have a bigger penis," said Aronfeld. "This was because of medical reasons: He just wanted to have relations with his wife."

But two weeks after the operation, Milla developed an infection that eventually turned to gangrene. Amputation of his penis was necessary to save his life, according to his lawyer, who alleges Boeru didn't exercise proper care after the surgery.

"Post-operative period is about anywhere between six to 24 hours after surgery. It does not include either days or months," testified Boeru.

"This is an infection that occurred in this gentleman because he didn't do what he was supposed to do post-operatively nine days after the surgery," Boeru's lawyer Jay Chimpoulis, told WPLG.

He suggested that Milla ignored medical instructions to avoid sex and developed a fecal infection.

"There are any number of ways he could've gotten that. None of them had anything to do with [Boeru]," Chimpoulis said.