A middle-aged man was left unable to urinate for three months after falling nearly 10ft onto a fence post. The 49-year-old started bleeding out of the end of his penis after his unfortunate landing, which placed the post between his legs.
The impact left the man from Auckland, New Zealand, in agony and made it difficult for him to urinate.
He went to the urology department at Auckland City Hospital, where doctors found his urethra — the tube passing urine — was damaged by the fall.
A man from Auckland, New Zealand, was left unable to urinate for three months after falling nearly 10ft onto a fence post and landing on his penis, doctors have revealed
What is the urethra?
The urethra is the tube that allows urine to pass out of the body.
In men it is a long tube connecting the bladder to the end of the penis. It also carries semen when a man ejaculates.
In women it is much shorter and opens just above the vagina.
Scans revealed there was a hole in the tube, allowing blood to come into the tract directly from a nearby vein.
They fit him with a catheter for three months to allow his urethra to heal, which left him urinating into a bag outside of his body.
He made a full recovery and surgeons eventually removed the catheter, leaving him passing fluid normally.
But doctors warned he could have suffered deadly sepsis if the urine passed bacteria into his bloodstream.
The unidentified man’s grisly injury was logged in the medical journal Urology Case Reports.
It did not specify what his three-metre (9.8ft) fall — the same height as an African bull elephant — came off of.
The fall left him in instant pain and he noticed his urine had changed colour because there was blood in it.
Blood in urine can make it turn a reddish, brown or tea-like shade.
He also suffered bruising in the perineum — the area between the scrotum and anus — that extended to the back of his upper thigh.
The man went to the urology department at his local hospital where doctors noticed his testicles were also sore.
They found blood in his urine but no other abnormalities, leading them to suspect he had suffered an injury to the urethra.
Doctors fed a tiny camera up his urethra to examine the extent of the damage and spotted a small hole in the lining of the tube.
Only a handful of similar injuries have been reported in medical literature.
The majority of patients can recover by simply allowing the urethra to repair itself, with the help of a catheter to divert the urine.
But in more serious cases, surgery has to be performed to close wounds.
