A schizophrenic man who wasn’t taking his medication chopped off his own penis with a kitchen knife.
The unidentified 48-year-old, from Kenya, has been left with a stump after the psychological episode.
Doctors who treated him said he only went to hospital after it had been detached for 16 hours.
He took his amputated penis with him. The medics did not clarify if this was because he regretted his behaviour and hoped it could be reattached.
Medics said he ‘attributed his action to perennial problems with the spouse, most of which surrounded his reproductive organs’.
No other details were provided in a report of the case, published in a medical journal.
Doctors hoped to reattach his penis but had to abandon their plans because it wasn’t preserved properly and was detached for too long. His testicles were left intact.
A schizophrenic man, 48, who chopped off his own penis with a kitchen knife leaving a stump has blamed marriage problems
If left too long the wound could have become infected and he may have had to have had a urostomy bag fitted because of the permanent damage to his urethra.
Blood loss or sepsis — a deadly immune response to infection — could even result in death, in a worst-case scenario. Doctors did not reveal how much blood the man lost, nor how he stopped any bleed.
The patient was not following his medication, surgeons at Egerton University in Njoro wrote in Urology Case Reports.
Medics rushed him for surgery to clean his wound and gave him general anaesthetic to knock him out so they could begin operating on the stump.
His damaged skin and remaining penile tissue were removed.
Dr Rono Kipkemoi, from Egerton University in Eldoret, Kenya, and colleagues said the man was ‘healing well’ after his operation.
They wrote: ‘Self-inflicted penile amputation is an uncommon form of physical self-harm resulting from psychological anomaly.
‘The condition not only presents a surgical emergency but also has the potential to cause subsequent challenges in self-care and sexual function thereby exacerbating the psychological distress of the patient.’
Injuries like these are incredibly rare. Patients who carry out such an act normally suffer from psychiatric disorders, hallucinations or drug abuse.
In cases where a person attempts to amputate their own penis with the intention of suicide it is known as phallicide.
Doctors are able to reattach penises if they have been well kept, are presented early and the wound is not too contaminated or mangled.
People who have had successful reattachment surgery are able to urinate normally and can even achieve erections after, in some cases.
Dr Fardod O’Kelly, urological surgeon at Beacon Hospital in Dublin, told MailOnline the complete removal of a penis can be extremely dangerous because of the large blood to the organ.
He said: ‘It’s unusual to see more than one of these cases every two to three years.
‘They are generally quite sad cases, as patients either have a background of psychiatric disease — as with Klingsor syndrome — or have taken perception altering drugs such as LSD.
‘The adult male penis has a very good blood supply, and the two corporal bodies which sit on top of the spongy part of the penis through which the urethra runs, completely fill with blood during an erection.
‘The dangers from self-amputation include significant blood loss, local infection, sepsis, an inability to urinate, inability to have intercourse and obviously the psychiatric sequelae which accompany it.
‘In general, the more the penis is amputated, the more irreversible damage can occur.
‘Many of these cases are often several hours until the patient sees a urological service, at which point the penis may be in no condition to be reconstructed and instead the area is refashioned, made safe, and a opening for the urethra placed behind the scrotum.
‘Psychiatric care here is critical.’