A schizophrenic man chopped off his penis with a kitchen knife and then flushed it down the toilet.
Sharing gory details of the incident in a medical journal, surgeons in India told how the unidentified 52-year-old was left with a stump.
The man, who had stopped taking his medication, didn’t turn up to hospital until 16 hours after amputating himself.
Medics said the man, from Pune, had ‘no suicidal intention’.
However, he attributed his action ‘to voices in his head that told him to cut his penis or otherwise face dire consequences’.
Writing in the Open Journal of Clinical and Medical Case Reports, doctors at Bharati Vidyapeeth Medical College in Pune said his scrotal skin was dislodged from the root of the penis.
Medics rushed the man into surgery to clean his wound. He was given general anaesthetic to knock him out so surgeons could operate on the stump.
After seven days in hospital, the man was discharged. Checks 20 days after the operation revealed the ‘stump was healing well’, medics also said.
The man reported no other complications and was able to pass urine.
Writing in the journal, they stated self-inflicted penile amputation — also known as Klingsor syndrome — is a ‘rare form of physical self-harm that stems from psychological anomalies’.
They added: ‘It presents not only as a surgical emergency but also has the potential to worsen the patient’s psychological distress and self-care challenges.’
Klingsor syndrome was first logged in medical literature in the 1990s and has been rarely documented since, with fewer than 30 official reports.
Patients who carry out such an act normally suffer from psychiatric disorders, hallucinations or drug abuse.
Doctors are able to reattach penises if they have been well kept, are presented early and the wound is not too contaminated or mangled.
People who have had successful reattachment surgery are able to urinate normally and can even achieve erections after, in some cases.
