Man, 22 suffers 5-week erection after bicycle injury

Erectile dysfunction are two words most men shudder at the thought of – but an even scarier prospect is when an erection lasts for five weeks.
That was the case for one young man who attended a Dublin hospital after a bike injury.

The 22-year-old mountain biker’s unfortunate ailment, known as priapism, was caused when he sustained a straddle injury on the crossbar of his bike that resulted in an irregular blood flow to his penis.

The man did not attend Tallaght Hospital until five weeks after sustaining the injury and medics reported that the initial examination ‘revealed no signs of injury, but penis was erect’.

A doctor who treated the man said that intercourse would have been ‘possible, but painful’ for the man during his ordeal.

According to the Irish Examiner, Dr Ronan Browne, Consultant Intervention radiologist at Tallaght Hospital, said: ‘It was an anxious time for the patient as it would be for any young man.’

A report in the Irish Medical Journal into the treatment of the man stated the unnamed patient’s ‘rigid erection’ could have caused a blood clot if it had not been treated.

After several different treatments, the man’s swelling finally subsided when doctors inserted gel foam and four tiny platinum coils at an abnormal connection between an artery and a vein that supplied blood to the man’s penis.
This reduced the ‘high flow’ blood supply to his member.