One for the books: Man with achy knee had calcification along penis, Bronx doctors say
Doctors suspected a man’s slip and fall may have broken his achy knee, but X-rays found a bone growing — around his penis. The “exceedingly rare” finding was written up by a medical team that included five Bronx doctors at Lincoln Hospital and Mental Health Center for September’s Urology Case Reports, and posted by Science Direct. It was an even bigger surprise for the 63-year-old man who walked into the ER with a painful knee.
According to the doctors, the man, who wasn’t identified, had taken a tumble onto his butt while he was walking with a cane. And though he was able to get up and continue walking, he started having left knee pain and decided to go to the emergency room to get it checked out. But during a physical at the ER, doctors also discovered he had pain in his penis too. “A pelvic x-ray performed to rule out any fracture showed a severe, asymmetric degenerative changes of the right hip,” the team reported — and something totally unexpected.
“An extensive, plaque-like calcification along the expected distribution of the penis was evident,” they reported. “The diagnosis of penile ossification along the entire penile shaft was suspected.” The elderly man bolted after that scary diagnosis, against the advice of his doctors, who wanted to do some follow-up testing. Erectile dysfunction is one of the possible outcomes, the team wrote, and treatment for chronic pain can range from pain killers to shots, to “mechanical stretching or vacuum devices” and “shockwave therapy.”
For now, the Bronx man’s pain in the penis is one for the books. “Ossification occurring in the human penis is exceedingly rare,” the medical team wrote. “The most common cause of ossification is Peyronie’s disease… The hardened plaque reduces flexibility and leads to a penile bend or curvature during erection leading eventually to erectile dysfunction.”
