PESHAWAR: Doctors have dismissed a social media campaign criticising the Institute of Kidney Diseases at the Hayatabad Medical Complex for giving five-year wait time to a minor child for hypospadias repair, insisting that the non-emergency cosmetic surgery should be done on grown-up patients for better outcomes.

“Regarding waiting time, there is no urgency. If the child can urinate normally, it is not a medical emergency. Most surgeons cannot produce good results until the child grows up. It is only after sexual maturity that its correction is needed,” Prof Obaidullah, who is expert in genital surgery, especially hypospadias, told Dawn.

He said it was one of the most complex procedures in the world.

Prof Obaidullah said hypospadias was one end of a spectrum of diseases called DSD or disorders of sexual development.

Claim it is one of world’s most complex surgeries

He said every first Friday of the month, he and other doctors conducted a multi-disciplinary meeting at the North West General Hospital and Research Centre where around 15 types of specialists examined parents of such children for free of charge and decided about their cases.

“In US, the average complication rate has been up to 70pc. In the UK, it was taken over by one plastic surgeon with whom I trained. However, in the rest of the world pediatric urologists, adult urologists and pediatric surgeons have been dealing with it,” he said.

The expert said his publications had been referenced widely including textbooks and that his mentor visited Peshawar and the rest of Pakistan frequently, popularising this surgery among plastic surgeons.

He said he had trained 5o surgeons at the centre, one of the largest in the country and was going around the world as guest speaker and operating on patients from across India to Turkiye, Canada and Middle East frequently.

Director of Burns and Plastic Surgery Centre Prof Tahmeedullah said that hypospadias was a congenital defect mainly occurring from marriages between cousins that required repair through a surgical procedure.

“We are doing such cases every day. It is a cosmetic procedure where the urethra is on the underside of the penis rather than the tip and causes no health issues if delayed.

There are certain protocols for every surgery and procedure which can be followed for better results,” he said.

About the IKD where a child was advised to come for hypospadias repair after five years, he said that certain procedures required a certain age limit about which the relevant doctor would decide for the benefit of the patient.

“Last year, we held a workshop on hypospadias where world renowned German-based plastic surgeons Dr Talha Hadidi and others shared the latest developments on hypospadias and they stressed on following the protocol, specifically the age of the children. We have to prioritise patients and focus first on those in need of urgent treatment, he said.

IKD director Dr Kamran Khan said that preference was accorded to patients suffering from cancer or other urinary issues, which were troubling patients but hypospadias weren’t health issues that cause problems and therefore, we can delay them till the patients attain a certain age.

He said paediatric urology was a very rare specialty and even the College of Physicians and Surgeon Pakistan had yet to start a fellowship in it.

“I have developed a curriculum for CPSP that is likely to launch first-ever training in this specialty next year. Children make up one third of the population, so we needed to expand services,” he said.

The IKD director said the institute had begun doing two renal transplants a day and recently, 30 new dialysis machines were procured and 70 people were recruited in view of the growing number of patients.

He said all doctors were following protocols for good results of treatment.

Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2026