The man suffered injuries after falling off a moped (Picture: Shutterstock)

A British man was left struggling with an erection for nine consecutive days after he fell off his moped and damaged his genitals.

It took 12 months for the 35-year-old ‘to return to normal erectile function following the injury’.

Surprisingly, he wasn’t in pain while he walked around with a Grade IV erection – which is classed as the strongest type on medical scale, the Erection Hardness Score.

The man said he experienced ‘mild discomfort in walking’, before he decided to check himself into a hospital after suffering for more than a week.


Doctors told him he had bruised his perineum – the small area in between the anus and the genitals – which caused a continuous flow of blood to be sent to his penis.



The blood then became trapped and was unable to drain and if not treated immediately, it can lead to scarring and permanent erectile dysfunction.

University Hospital Southampton’s findings of the man’s unusual symptoms were published last month in Case Reports in Urology.

It read: ‘On examination there was a grade IV erection with a rigid base and shaft with slight dorsal curvature of 10 degrees, which was non-tender.

Doctors said the injury resulted in a ‘rare’ prolonged erection (Picture: hindawi.com)

‘There was a superficial haematoma [blood clot] present to the scrotum and base of [the] penis.’

Priapism – the term given for an erection that lasts too long – is caused, in 95 per cent of cases, when blood can’t leave the penis because of a blockage of blood vessels.

It is called low-flow priapism and drugs to treat erectile dysfunction, along with neurological conditions, are the most common causes.

But the motorcyclist suffered a high-flow priapism, after his injury caused two fistulas which redirected the blood to his penis.

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In around 60 per cent of cases they resolve on their own but this patient decided to have an invasive procedure to treat it.

Doctors said: ‘To our knowledge, this is the first reported case to use multiple materials for embolisation for this [condition].

‘Timely intervention needs to be considered to avoid the potential risk of erectile dysfunction in the long term from conservative measures.’

The man improved shortly after but it took up to a year to have completely normal erectile function.

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