- A 69-year-old man with obesity and cough came to the ER with breathing problems.
- When he started to feel worse, he was put on a ventilator and turned on his stomach.
- After that, he develops an erection and needs to be drained with needles. He died shortly thereafter.
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A man experienced a rare COVID-19 side effect, a three-hour erection, before dying from complications associated with the disease.
According to a January 1 case report in The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, the 69-year-old man went to the emergency room after medication his doctor prescribed him did not help with his shortness of breath.
The man, who had been obese and had been coughing all week before, soon developed a fever. When the ER doctors who wrote the case report tested him on COVID-19, the results came back positive.
His health continued to deteriorate over the next ten days in the hospital and he needed steroids, a ventilator and to be turned from below to stimulate the airflow through his body, a well-known technique called to work for COVID-19. About 12 hours later, a nurse discovers that the patient is experiencing a strange COVID-19 symptom that has only been reported once before – priapism or an unintended erection that may feel painful.
Priapism is rare, tends to affect people over 30, and is more common in people with blood disorders such as sickle cell anemia, leukemia and multiple myeloma, according to the Mayo Clinic. Priapism is the result of blood not being able to leave the penis, or blood flowing incorrectly into the penis.
Although only two known people had priapism after being diagnosed with COVID-19, experts say it makes sense that the blood-related condition could occur. This is because a person infected with the coronavirus can experience a cytokine storm where the body’s immune system disappears and can cause blood clots. The blood clots can affect the penis, said dr. Richard Viney, a urological surgeon at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, UK, told the Daily Mail.
“In this patient, he had a low-flow priapism that would definitely fit in with microembolism. [little clots forming in smaller blood vessels] and this is one of the complications of COVID that we see in many other organ systems, ‘Viney said.
The man died shortly after his erection healed
First, hospital staff beat the man on his back and used ice packs in an attempt to bring down his erection.
When the method does not work, the doctors give his penis an ultrasound. They saw that his blood vessels were clean and working well, and so they diagnosed him with ischemic priapism, the kind associated with blood drainage issues.
To treat the patient, doctors performed a standard procedure for people with ischemic priapism, and they inserted two needles into the penis to drain the excess blood. They also gave him a drug that he had not used, and his erection disappeared 30 minutes later.
The man’s lungs continued to deteriorate and he died shortly afterwards of COVID-19 complications, although he had not yet had an erection during that time.