Doctors who transplanted a complete penis and scrota onto the body of a soldier wounded by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan have reported the man has regained near normal sexual functions.

US surgeons say in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine the man has the ability to achieve near normal erections and orgasm more than one year after the surgery was completed.

The 14-hour landmark operation was performed at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, in March 2018, by nine plastic and two urological surgeons.

The transplant included part of the abdominal wall, but not the testicles.