Rise of genital injuries among men has B.C. doctors stunned

Victoria hospital saw six patients in a week — a usual amount for a year

DOUGLAS QUAN

It was admittedly a small sample size.

But when six mostly middleaged men showed up at a Victoria hospital over a week with various genital injuries, doctors couldn’t help but wonder: Could the stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic be leading to more — and riskier — sexual behaviour?

“One can speculate that the increased time at home may have led to higher rates of sexual intercourse, with potentially increased riskier sexual practice,” a team of doctors wrote in an article that was just published on the Canadian Urological Association Journal website, titled “Male genitalia injuries: Unspoken collateral damage from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Lead author Dr. Jesse Spooner, who was finishing his medical school training in Victoria at the time, told the Star this week staff surgeons hadn’t seen such an influx of cases before.

“The group of urologists were quite amazed at the volume of urological trauma during COVID,” he said. “We had six total cases, which is what a typical urologist would expect over a year, especially in Victoria, which has a more elderly population.”

Spooner, who is now a urology resident at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said the influx happened around the time that B.C. was beginning to ease COVID-19 restrictions, leading them to wonder i f that might have been a contributing factor.

“We can only speculate that the social isolation rules and the lifting of them could lead to people making up for lost time in an intimate manner,” he said.

According to the article, two men — one 41, the other 47 — showed up separately at the hospital after suffering penile fractures during intercourse with their respective partners. One of the men had also been under the influence of ketamine and alcohol.

Another man, 38, showed up in the ER with penile pain for a different reason.

“Further history revealed that he had reported masturbation five times per day,” the article says.

“He was discharged home with instructions to reduce the daily episodes of self-stimulation and use adequate lubrication when necessary.”

A 46-year-old man finally sought help for ischemic priapism, an erection that won’t go away — in this case, after four days. He had been taking antipsychotic medications, whose side effects can include priapism.

“In a ‘pre-lockdown’ world, this patient likely (and hopefully) would have come to seek treatment much earlier, potentially improving outcomes,” the doctors wrote.

The remaining two cases appeared to be unfortunate accidents. A 45-year-old man suffered a testicular rupture while riding an ATV with a friend after the lockdown restrictions had eased.

And a 26-year-old man suffered a dog bite from a German shepherd to the scrotum and penis while visiting a friend.

The Star contacted two urologists — one in Calgary and one in Toronto — to see if any of them had observed similar trends in urologic injuries during the pandemic. Neither had. However, Dr. John Aquino, medical director at the Ontario Men’s Health clinic, said he had noticed an increase in requests to refill prescriptions for Viagra and Cialis, causing him to wonder at one point: “Did your dog eat your prescription?”

Aquino said patients have typically fallen into one of two categories during this pandemic: men who were experiencing dysfunction in their relationships and whose sexual activity had declined due to physical distancing measures and men who were experiencing greater intimacy with their partners.

Research from around the world appears inconclusive as to whether the pandemic has altered people’s sex lives.

An online survey by Indiana University researchers in April found that nearly half of all adults reported some kind of change, most commonly a decrease, in their sexual behaviour in the past month.

In their article, Spooner and his colleagues noted that guidance from public health officials on interpersonal relationships has varied during the pandemic.

“The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment has proposed finding a ‘sex buddy’ during the pandemic. In British Columbia, Dr. Bonnie Henry (Provincial Health Officer) has made more subdued recommendations, including a focus on online dating, and stated that ‘now is not the time for rapid serial dating.’ There remains a lack of consensus.”

“We can only speculate that the social isolation rules and the lifting of them could lead to people making up for lost time in an intimate manner.”

DR. JESSE SPOONER STUDY’S LEAD AUTHOR