Mutilated women rediscover sexual pleasure

Pioneering reconstructive surgery has brought new hope to a small number of the 140 million women worldwide who have suffered the pain and sexual desolation of female genital mutilation. Newly published feedback from hundreds of women who have had the reparative surgery reveals that it worked for most of them, easing pain and improving sexual pleasure.

"The real news is that it's feasible to give back pleasure, feasible to reconstruct the clitoris, and possible to give women back their lost identities," says Pierre Fold?s of the Saint Germain Poissy Hospital in France, who developed the procedure.

Fold?s and his colleagues followed up almost 3000 women ? mostly from Mali, Senegal and Ivory Coast ? one year after they had undergone the procedure. Because internal clitoral tissue survives the mutilation, the surgeons were able to trim away scar tissue and build a new clitoris that would protrude in the normal way.

Of the 866 women who responded to the follow-up, 821 reported that their pain had improved or was no worse. Clitoral pleasure had improved or was no worse in 815 of the women. Some 290 women reported a substantial easing of pain, and 430 experienced orgasms ? including 129 who had never had them before.

Only 5 per cent of the respondents suffered side effects, such as bleeding, and 20 women had less clitoral pleasure than before the procedure.

All surgery was performed in France, but Fold?s says there are plans to train surgeons in Dakar, Senegal, where female genital mutilation is fiercely opposed by the NGO Tostan.

Journal reference: The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60400-0

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