Man left with agonising 30-hour erection awarded £41,000 after misdiagnosis

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A man who was left with a painful 30-hour erection after a series of medical mishaps has been awarded £41,000 by a compensation panel.

His wife was awarded a further £4,000 for what the board called “moral damages.”The Valencian Community Legal Advisory Council in Valencia recognised the responsibility of the Spanish Department of Health for the inadequate and late care received by a patient at the Ontinyent Hospital.The claimant, a 36-year-old man with paraplegia due to a spinal cord injury, had been taken to the emergency room of the Vall d'Albaida health centre for an erection that lasted for 6 hours after a bladder catheterisation.After a physical examination, the patient was discharged pending a routine check-up by his family doctor.

However, that decision was flawed, based as it was on the doctor’s expectation of a "spontaneous resolution of the erection.”But instead, the unfortunate man endured a further 20 hours before returning to the hospital in Ontinyent.During this visit, the man’s penis was surgically drained, and the problem was observed to at least partially subside.

Unfortunately, instead of admitting the patient to a ward for observation, a decision was made to once again send him home.Not long after he left the health centre, the erection increased in intensity and the man had to return to the Ontinyent Emergency Department for the third time.On that occasion he was referred to the Lluís Alcanyís hospital in Xàtiva, but the patient opted instead to go to a hospital in Valencia where his medical records were kept.