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To understand penile cancer, it helps to know about the normal structure and function of the penis.
The penis is the external male sexual organ, as well as part of the urinary system. It has several types of tissue, including skin, nerves, smooth muscle, and blood vessels.
The main part of the penis is known as the shaft, and the head of the penis is called the glans. At birth, the glans is covered by a piece of skin called the foreskin, or prepuce. The foreskin is often removed in infant boys in an operation called a circumcision.
Inside the penis are 3 chambers that contain a soft, spongy network of blood vessels. Two of these cylinder-shaped chambers, known as the corpora cavernosa, lie on either side of the upper part of the penis. The third chamber lies below them and is known as the corpus spongiosum. This chamber widens at its end to form the glans. The corpus spongiosum surrounds the urethra, a thin tube that starts at the bladder and runs through the penis. Urine and semen travel through the urethra and leave the body through an opening in the glans of the penis, called the meatus.
When a man gets an erection, nerves signal his body to store blood in the vessels inside the corpora cavernosa. As the blood fills the chambers, the spongy tissue expands, causing the penis to elongate and stiffen. After ejaculation, the blood flows back into the body, and the penis becomes soft again.
Semen is made up of fluid produced by the prostate gland and the seminal vesicles (2 small sacs near the bladder and prostate), plus sperm cells that are made in the testicles. It is stored in the seminal vesicles. During ejaculation, semen passes into the urethra and out the meatus at the tip of the penis.
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