A 34-year-old man hailing from the United Kingdom, with a disturbing history of 'paranoid schizophrenia', chopped off his own penis with the help of a kitchen knife during an 'act of deliberate self-harm'.
The man who's identity is withheld due to security reasons was first discovered fallen unconscious at his residence in Birmingham by a neighbor after he amputated his genitals and was lying in a pool of blood.
Medics who arrived at the scene rushed the man in an ambulance to the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and kept his penis packed with ice.
The details of the gruesome injury was released by the British Medical Journal which shows his psychotic episode of self-inflicted knife wounds on his body.
The journal detailed that when the patient was taken into the operation theatre, his penis was severed for 23 hours. Medical evidence shows that a penis must be reattached within 15 hours and anything beyond that would lead to an unsuccessful attempt to sew the genital back.
Luckily, the doctors successfully operated the man and stitched back his manhood to the place it rightfully belongs. The surgeons managed to reattach the man's penis in a operation that lasted for 23-hours straight.
The journal shows that a group of surgeons took a vein from the patient's arm and got the blood flowing into the man's penis again.
''Given the significance of the amputated organ, replantation was attempted in this case despite the long warm and total ischemia (loss of blood to an organ) time, which is the longest in reported literature,'' the journal read.
The man's penis was then thoroughly cleaned with antiseptics to prevent infection and prescribed antibiotics for recovery. The unidentified man also went through skin grafts and according to the British Medical Journal, the man was able to ''achieve a full erection.''
''The success of this case, therefore, should encourage surgeons to attempt penile replantation, even with prolonged ischemi time, due to possible success and the potential physical and psychosocial effects of organ loss for the patient. Penile replantation should be attempted, even if ischaemia time is prolonged, despite lower success rates given the significance of the injury to an individual.'' the journal read.
