Penile Enlargement Patients Sue, Say They Were Disfigured

The advertisements beckoned with promises like “No man ever needs to feel inadequate again” and “Dreams do come true.”

And they found an audience.

Several thousand men, willing to pay upward of $5,900 to have their penises enlarged, answered the ads.

They were men such as “Lee,” who thought the surgery would improve his sex life. Or “John,” who wanted to look good in the locker room after workouts.

What they got was something else again.

Claiming that they were badly disfigured, former patients--more than 40 so far--are filing malpractice suits against the physician behind the ads, Dr. Melvyn Rosenstein. The high-profile Culver City urologist’s medical license has been suspended temporarily by a state administrative law judge who accused him of “gross negligence.”

“It sounded so good,” said Lee, a Los Angeles man in his mid-40s who asked that his real name not be revealed. “Dr. Rosenstein said he was the expert, and there were no real dangers.”

This, after all, was Southern California, where flesh sculptors have honed cosmetic surgery to a fine art. Bellies can be flattened, breasts built up, worry lines smoothed over, skin peeled and that flab from the spare tire around the belly liposuctioned out and transplanted to the buttocks. Why not add an inch or two to the penis?

And why not have it done by Rosenstein, the self-described “world’s leading authority on penile surgery”?

Reality set in once they left the operating room.

Patients say they experienced such excruciating pain that they took painkillers to the point of addiction. Others thought about suicide.

Some describe their penises as lumpy, misshapen masses of fat. The promise of looking good has been replaced by a fear that someone might actually see them naked. The sex lives that they had hoped to improve have vanished.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Elisa B. Wolfe, who is heading a three-member team of lawyers representing the Medical Board of California in its case against Rosenstein, calls the complaints so far “the tip of the iceberg.”

“People were reluctant to come forward,” in large part because of embarrassment, Wolfe said.

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Half a dozen of Rosenstein’s patients did consent to interviews for this article, but none would allow his name to be used.

“I don’t want to become an object of ridicule in my office,” said a Los Angeles man. He said he had not had sex in the 2 1/2 years since his initial surgery. Two follow-up operations were needed in an effort to correct the damage from the first, he said. Nevertheless, he said, “It is not something you want to look at.”

“It is like being raped,” an Arizona man said. “What makes it even worse is that I paid for it.”

As for Rosenstein, he is under court order not to practice medicine or advertise his surgeries in California until the state’s case can be adjudicated, a process that could take months.

State Administrative Law Judge Samuel D. Reyes, in supporting the Medical Board’s request that Rosenstein’s medical license be suspended until the case is decided, said in a scorching opinion that Rosenstein made untrue and misleading claims in his advertising, gave patients “significant misinformation” about the risks and complications involved in the surgery, and committed “gross negligence” in treating his patients.

Rosenstein, during an interview with The Times, angrily blamed his troubles on professional rivals, disgruntled ex-employees and a relatively small number of patients. He has thousands of satisfied customers, he told The Times.

Rosenstein, a tall, self-assured former New Yorker, said all his patients signed “informed consent” waivers and knew the risks involved. “What would happen if I told these guys everything would be perfect--that this was magic wand therapy? Do you know how many unhappy patients I would have?” he asked. “It makes no sense at all for me to try and lie to patients.”

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Until his legal problems, Rosenstein had enjoyed meteoric and unparalleled financial success beginning in 1991 and lasting until he was forced to end his surgeries last month.

The success came at a time when other physicians were struggling to maintain incomes and practices against the encroachments of managed-care medicine, and Rosenstein cites this as a source of some professional jealousy. Rosenstein practiced medicine for 20 years, rising to chief of staff and chief of surgery at Brotman Medical Center in Culver City before devoting his practice almost exclusively to penile enlargements.

Using aggressive salesmanship to tap into what turned out to be a huge demand by men for his cosmetic creations, the surgeon, by his own estimate, performed 5,000 surgeries between 1991 and 1996. Based on his fee schedule, this would mean that Rosenstein took in at least $30 million, nearly all of it cash. The procedure was not covered by insurance, and clients were required to pay in advance.

Rosenstein spent up to $250,000 a month on newspaper and magazine ads, his attorney said. Cultivating a celebrity profile, Rosenstein appeared often on radio and television. He became known as the cosmetic surgeon who performed the enlargement technique on John Wayne Bobbitt, the man whose penis was cut off by an enraged wife.

Last year, Rosenstein operated offices in New York, San Francisco, Dallas and nine other cities. Each office was staffed by screeners who were paid bonuses to refer patients to the physician’s Culver City office. Pre-screened patients flew to Culver City from overseas and major U.S. cities. Rosenstein added first one, then two operating rooms, hired contract surgeons and did about 10 surgeries a day himself.

The surgeon lengthens the penis by cutting the suspensory ligament responsible for its stability. Once the ligament is cut, a portion of the organ normally hidden inside the body emerges, giving it length, or at least the appearance of length. Additional girth is created by injections of fat taken through liposuction from the abdominal area.

Rosenstein said he takes pride in doing the operation quickly. He performed many in under an hour and one in a “record” of 20 minutes, said a surgical assistant, Stephanie Geckler, whose testimony helped sway Judge Reyes to suspend Rosenstein’s license.

Geckler said patients were moved in and out so fast that surgery rooms were not adequately cleaned. Blood would be left on the floor, and occasionally fat would fly out of the liposuction machine and splat on walls and cabinets and not be cleaned up.

Rosenstein contends that Geckler’s complaints against him were made out of spite. She has filed several legal actions against him since leaving his office.

He argues that the number of complaints about his work is proportionately small. He also said the complaints should be viewed in the context of cosmetic surgery, where “you tend to have a lot of unhappy patients” if for no other reason than they are driven to the surgery by a possibly unattainable ideal.

But other physicians say the enlargement techniques used by Rosenstein are experimental, unproven and generally not accepted by others in the profession.

Dr. Mark Gorney, medical director of The Doctors Co., a Napa-based firm said to be the largest malpractice insurer in the state, sent out a letter to physicians in 1993 saying that they would not be insured for malpractice if they injected fat into the penis to increase girth.

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In the letter, he said the “safety and effectiveness of these procedures are far from proven.” During an interview, Gorney said, “the vast majority of physicians look on [fat injections into the penis] with a combination of amusement and contempt.” Gorney said most physicians believe the surgery is unnecessary.

“There are some genuine situations where penile enlargement is an important medical and psychological necessity, such as when people are born with an extremely small penis,” Gorney said. “But for the others, do they have a normal, rational justification? The answer is no.”

As Rosenstein’s legal troubles mount, his former patients are struggling to overcome a host of problems that they said occurred after the surgery. Many are seeking out other doctors, hoping that the damage can be corrected.

“Psychologically, it was unbelievably hard to deal with,” said a patient from Palm Springs, who added that the surgery left him with terrible scars. “I am a religious person and would not think of taking my life. But if I wasn’t such a strong-willed person, I might not have made it.”

“I go through deep, deep depressions over this,” an Arizona man said. Before the operation, when he was working out regularly, he would take two showers a day, he said. Now he takes only one every three days because he can’t stand to look at himself, he said. “I doubt if [Rosenstein] spends 10 seconds thinking about me, but I think about him 24 hours a day. I replay the operation, over and over. I replay every single conversation I had with this guy. It is like a nightmare that goes on and on and on.”