A nurse treats a patient in the intensive care unit at St. George’s Hospital in south west London.
Victoria Jones/PA Images via Getty Images
A 69-year-old obese man came to the emergency room with a cough and difficulty breathing.
As he got worse and worse, he was connected to a ventilator and turned on his stomach.
He then developed a three-hour erection that had to be drained with needles. Shortly afterwards he died.
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According to one Fallbericht in „The American Journal of Emergency Medicine“ vom 1. Januar a 69-year-old corona patient came to an emergency room because the prescribed medication did not help his shortness of breath. He was overweight and had had a cough for a week. Soon after, he also had a fever. When the emergency room doctors tested him for Covid-19, the result was positive.
For the next ten days in the hospital, his health deteriorated further. He needed steroids and was put on a ventilator in the prone position to stimulate airflow through his body – a well-known technique called “proning” that has been shown to be effective on Covid-19. About twelve hours later, a nurse discovered an unusual Covid-19 side effect in the patient so far only reported once had been: Priapism or an unwanted erection that lasts for hours, which can be painful.
Priapism is rare. Usually people over 30 are affected and People with blood disorders like sickle cell disease, leukemia and multiple myeloma. Priapism occurs when either the blood cannot leave the penis or the blood does not flow into the penis properly.
So far, this side effect has only been detected in two people diagnosed with Covid-19. Nevertheless, experts are not surprised that such a blood-related condition can occur. A cytokine storm can occur in a person who is infected with the coronavirus, in which the body’s immune system goes crazy and forms blood clots. These blood clots can also affect the penis, according to Richard Viney. He is a urological surgeon at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.
“This patient had low-flow priapism, which is certainly due to microembolism,” said Viney. These are clots that form in smaller blood vessels. “We also see this complication in many other organ systems,” explains the doctor.
He passed away shortly after the erection stopped
First, the hospital staff turned the man on his back and tried to use ice packs to reduce his erection. But when that didn’t work, the doctors examined his penis with an ultrasound. They realized that his blood vessels were clear and functioning properly. As a result, they diagnosed him with ischemic priapism, which means that the blood could no longer drain properly.
To treat this condition, they performed a standard procedure for people with ischemic priapism: they inserted two needles into the penile shaft to drain the excess blood. They also gave him decongestant medication and 30 minutes later his erection was gone. However, the man’s condition continued to deteriorate and he died soon after of complications from Covid-19 disease, but did not experience another erection.
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