Man Nearly Loses Penis Due To Pubic Hair Cutting Off Circulation
Just when you thought you’d heard it all. Note that this story may be disturbing to read, via DailyMail:
A man nearly lost part of his penis after pubic hair got caught around his tip and cut off its blood supply.
Medics claim the uncircumcised man’s ordeal — which has left him with a deformed member — could have been avoided if he washed properly. The 57-year-old, who wasn’t named, ‘rarely’ retracted his foreskin to clean, according to the Australian urologists who treated him.
He also urinated sitting down, meaning that the build-up of hair that collected under his foreskin went unnoticed. Surgeons described the hairs as being ‘matted together’ and having formed a ‘tight ring’ under his glans — the head of the penis.
Hospital doctors described the man — who suffered from anxiety, depression, type 2 diabetes and hypertension — as being ‘unkempt’. After pulling back his foreskin they found the mass of hairs tied around the penis just below the head, strangling its width to just 0.4 inches (1cm) in diameter.
The trapped hairs had ‘matted together forming a tight ring’ over time, doctors wrote in Urology Case Reports — causing extensive wounds and scars. It had completely divided his urethra at the end.
His condition is known as hair tourniquet syndrome, when a hair or thread becomes tightly wrapped around fingers, toes or genitals.
Dr Angela Holmes and fellow urologists at the hospital cut off the hair immediately but told the man he would have to have an operation to save the remaining tissue. He ran away from hospital after hearing about the risks of surgery, which included losing part of the penis if the wounds did not heal properly.
But two days later he reappeared after doctors attempted to get in contact with him — despite having no mobile phone to be reached on.
He was taken to an operating theatre where doctors then cleaned the wounds to his urethra. Two weeks after the op, he returned after flesh around the stitches began to erode again.
They operated on him again, removing the damaged tissue as well as bacteria and fitted another catheter, this time directly into his bladder. Doctors also circumcised him.
After the second surgery, doctors struggled to find the man again and feared they would not be able to remove the catheter.
However, he visited again after two months. His wounds had mostly healed, though he was left with a deformity to the underside of the glans.
