Covid patient suffers four-hour erection after coronavirus ‘triggered priapism and blood clots’
A MAN was left with an agonising four-hour erection after being infected with coronavirus doctors have warned.
The 62-year-old, from France, was in hospital being treated for severe Covid-19 when he started suffering with the condition - known as priapism.
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Medics said it was caused by trapped blood in the penis, which they drained and discovered was full of blood clots.
Up to a third of Covid patients have been reported to have developed blood clotting or thrombosis as a result of the bug.
It can disrupt blood flow and impact infected patients who already have difficulty breathing due to the virus.
Blockages can also trigger deadly heart attacks and strokes - and now doctors fear it could lead to priapism in men.
Case report
Medics who treated the French patient explained the details in a case report published in The American Journal of Emergency Medicine.
He had been in intensive care and on a ventilator at the Centre Hospitalier de Versailles in Le Chesnay, near Paris, for two weeks.
The man initially called his doctor after experiencing the key coronavirus symptoms - a fever, cough and difficulty breathing.
What is priapism?
PRIAPISM is a persistent and often painful erection that lasts for longer than four hours.
Typically it causes erections without sexual stimulation.
The condition develops when blood in the penis gets trapped in the blood vessels and can't drain out.
If it's not treated immediately, the condition can cause scarring and permanent erectile dysfunction.
Priapism can happen in all age groups, including newborns.
But it usually affects boys aged five to ten and men aged 20 to 50.
There are two types of priapism:
- low-flow priapism - where blood gets trapped in the erection chambers. It often happens without a known cause in healthy blokes, but can also happen in patients with sickle cell disease and leukaemia.
- high-flow priapism - this is more rare and not usually painful. It's the result of a ruptured artery, and is often caused by injury to the penis or perineum.
A common cause of the condition is the use and misuse of certain drugs.
For more information visit the Cleveland Clinic.
He also had diarrhoea and was rushed to hospital two days later where a test confirmed he had been infected with Covid-19.
Doctors said he needed urgent mechanical ventilation as he was showing signs of respiratory failure.
They also carried out a physical examination and found "previously unidentified priapism".
Agonising
The patient was sedated and therefore unable to answer questions about pain - however it is known to be agonising, the doctors said.
The two chambers of tissue inside the penis, known medically as the corpora cavernosa, were rigid but the tip was flaccid.
An ice pack was applied to the area and after fours hours his erection still hadn't gone down.
They decided to carry out a procedure to remove the blood from his penis using a needle.
This revealed "dark blood clots" which they said were the result of thrombosis induced by the coronavirus.
It suggested he had suffered low-flow priapism, which is when the blood becomes trapped in the erection chambers, rather than high-flow priapism caused by injury.
The condition can affect men with sickle-cell disease, leukaemia or malaria - but it's been known to happen in otherwise healthy men for no reason.
Covid-linked
In this case, the doctors concluded that the man's priapism had been triggered by Covid-19, which is known to cause blood clotting complications.
The medics wrote: "Although the arguments supporting a causal link between Covid-19 and priapism are very strong in our case, reports of further cases would strengthen the evidence.
"The clinical and laboratory presentation in our patient strongly suggests priapism related to SARS-CoV-2 infection."
Priapism can lead to long-term damage so treatment is needed urgently.
Doctors drained the blood from the patient's penis and gave him drugs to normalise his nervous system as well as medication to stop blood clotting.
The case report stated that he hadn't suffered with priapism since leaving hospital.
Writing in the case report, intensive care doctor Myriam Lamamri, said that blood clotting caused by Covid-19 had been widely reported.
Usually, blood clotting happens to stop a wound from bleeding when someone injuries themselves.
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But it can sometimes occur within a blood vessel - preventing blood from flowing normally through the circulatory system, including the heart, brain and lungs.
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Experts have started to notice this troubling blood-clotting phenomenon is occurring more frequently in Covid-19 patients, but are yet to determine the cause.
This case is understood to be the first time that penile thrombosis has been reported in patients with coronavirus.