Anand’s alleged attempt foiled: Battery man pushes his penis up, gets stuck, causing necrosis

A seventy-year-old Australian man needed urgent urethral surgery after three button-style batteries became stuck in his penis. The 73-year-old man told doctors when he reached the hospital that he was deliberately boosting his “sexual gratification” by inserting batteries in his penis. This resulted in a case of urethral necrosis.

“To the best of our understanding, this is the first reported case of urethral necrosis with button battery insertion,” the doctors who operated on him wrote in the March edition of Urology Case Reports. Urethral necrosis is the death of tissue in the urethra, the tube that carries urine from the bladder out of the body.

Doctors noted their observations in the study and noted that the patient had reportedly had batteries inserted several times before, but they had not been stuck inside. The man had previously undergone shockwave therapy on his penis as he had been suffering from erectile dysfunction for three years.

The man waited 24 hours to seek medical attention and doctors immediately removed the foreign objects because the corrosion of batteries can cause necrosis in just two hours. He also hoped the man would not succumb to the rare but deadly infection of Fournier’s gangrene.

Using forceps, surgeons were eventually successful in removing the tiny batteries from the man’s penis. “All of the discarded batteries were coated with a black tar-like material,” the study said.

Ten days later, the man returned to the hospital and complained that he was noticing swelling and strange discharge. After this the doctors decided to operate again.

“An incision was made on the skin of the penis (and) a large amount of (fluid) came out,” the doctors said. Doctors who feared the man would develop necrosis discovered that they were right about their concerns as the man developed “extensive degrees of necrosis”. Doctors also removed part of his urethra.

In men, the urethra is a tube that runs through the penis, allowing urine to exit the body from the urinary bladder. “Given the complexity of his injury, it was recognized that formal penile urethral reconstruction would require a 3-stage repair,” the researchers said, describing the complex, six-month procedure of the mucous membrane graft.

He then assessed the severely damaged penis and decided that “the best option would be not to reconstruct the penis further”.

(With inputs from The New York Post)