A 15-year-old boy who inserted a knotted USB cable into his penis ended up needing surgery after it got stuck inside him.
The unidentified teenager, of London, told doctors he inserted the cable to ‘measure the length of his penis’.
But his experiment went wrong when the already-knotted cable got stuck, with both ends of the USB left hanging out of his member.
The boy made several attempts to remove it himself but this resulted in him urinating a large amount of blood, prompting his family to take him to A&E.
The X-Ray of the knotted USB cable after it became stuck inside the boy’s body. The teenager inserted it into his penis in a sexual experiment gone wrong. After repeated attempts to remove the item by both himself and medical professionals were unsuccessful, an X-Ray was ordered to determine the exact size and location of the object ahead of surgery.
Hospital staff also failed to pull out the cable using special tools due to the position of the knot, doctors detailed in the journal Urology Case Reports.
The boy was urgently transferred to University College Hospital London for further treatment.
He asked to be examined without his mother present, and confessed to staff that he inserted the cable to measure his penis out of sexual curiosity.
After an X-ray revealed the exact size and positions of the knot, the teen was sent to surgery.
In an effort to remove the cable, surgeons cut lengthways into his bulbospongiosus muscle, an area between the genitals and the anus.
Medics managed to extract the knot through the incision and then cut it free from the rest of the cable.
Once the knot was removed, the remaining two pieces of the cable were pulled out the opening of his penis.
There were no complications in his recovery and he was discharged from hospital the next day.
The USB cable after it was removed from inside the boy’s penis. Surgeons cut through the muscles surrounding the penis and scrotum and then severed and removed the knot. The two ends of the cable were then pulled out through the penis opening.
Follow-up scans two weeks after the surgery revealed no lasting damage but doctors noted the boy will need ongoing monitoring in the future.
Although stating that cases like these are rare, the doctors said previous cases had shown a wide variety of objects had been inserted into the opening of penises in a similar manner.
Clio Kennedy and fellow medics who treated the boy listed needles, pins, iron wires and pistachio shells, as examples.
The most common reasons for doing so involve sexual curiosity, sexual practice after intoxication, and as a result of mental disorders, the doctors noted.
The insertion of objects into the opening of the penis for sexual pleasure is known as sounding, which carries a number of risks.
If an object gets stuck inside the penis it can cause several potential problems.
These can range from a burning sensation after urinating, large amounts of blood in the urine, an inability to urinate, and painful erections.
More serious complications, such as bladder a hole appearing in the bladder, and scarring of the tube that carries urine out of the body can require major reconstructive procedures to fix.
The doctors noted that a detailed history from patients on the object inserted and the method to do so are critical to health professionals investigation.
This highlighted the need to discuss the issue with patients in a ‘a supportive and nonjudgmental manner’ as patients may feel ‘uncomfortable’ about providing all relevant information, the doctors said.
Dr Amr Raheem a consultant andrologist, from private health clinic International Andrology London, told MailOnline that this case highlighted the most serious consequence for sounding with the object needing surgery to remove.
‘Although the surgery was successful and without immediate complications, he may later develop narrowing of the urethra which can give him problems when passing urine or predispose him to recurrent urinary tract infection,’ he said.
Dr Raheem said even if a man or teenager manages to remove an object inserted into their penis it was still a risky sexual practise.
‘When you introduce anything inside your body that is not sterile, you can cause a tissue infection, infections can sometimes be serious especially in people with low immunity as in diabetics, a serious infection can lead to tissue necrosis or even sepsis,’ he said.
Other potential dangers he listed included developing a urinary tract infection (UTI), injury of your urethra, or fistula formation meaning that urine comes out of an artificially, and in case of sounding, self-made, hole.
While Dr Raheem said he was unaware of any studies into how common sounding is in the UK he added that he had seen a rise in the number of patients with symptoms that could be linked to the sexual practise and said social media could be to blame.
‘I believe it is becoming more common as everything is thanks to social media and in general the easier ways that misinformation can be spread,’ he said.
‘We certainly have seen an increase in these practices amongst patients that present with symptoms in our clinics.’
For those curious about trying sounding Dr Raheem offered this simple advice: ‘Don’t’.
If they insisted on going ahead, the andrologist urged men to use something smooth and blunt, sterile, and to use lubricant, preferably an item designed for this purpose such as the tools used by doctors for medical urethral sounding.
He added, that if men experience bleeding, or a burning sensation in their penis after sounding they should consult a medical professional.