A Chicago man with dementia had to be hospitalized after he wrapped multiple rubber bands so tightly around his own penis that the organ nearly began to rot. The case, which was reported in the medical journal Urology Case Reports, detailed the experience of the 81-year-old man who refused to remove the bands even after his wife begged him to do so. Thankfully, his life (and his member) were spared.
- The man turned up to the hospital for an entirely different reason. According to the case report, the man went to hospital after suffering from symptoms of diabetic ketoacidosis in which low insulin levels can make sufferers severely ill or even cause them to die. However, once there, his wife told medical professionals that her husband had wrapped his scrotum in rubber bands three days ago and had refused to take them off.
- The man seemed confused when confronted about the rubber bands. However, doctors examined him and discovered that his penis was swollen and was yellow and purple, which told them it was beginning to die off. The rubber bands in combination with his diabetes left his penis in “a necrotic or gangrenous state,” the study revealed.
- The treatment certainly doesn’t sound pleasant. Doctors burned off the dead flesh with a hot wire and then removed it with scalpels. Next, they inserted a catheter to drain the urine which he’d been unable to express for the past three days. He was also given a five-day course of antibiotics, after which he made a full recovery.
- Thankfully, this is an incredibly rare scenario. Dr. Fardod O’Kelly, a urological surgeon at Beacon Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, told the Daily Mail: “Strangulation cases like this are thankfully rare. This is important as the arterial compression means no blood flow in, and that means no oxygen supply, so the organ begins to die.”
