A 41-year-old man in Iran who dripped household superglue into his urethra to stop bladder leaks ended up unable to urinate and needed surgeons to remove a 10cm (nearly 4-inch) hardened block from his penis.
The man had been suffering from urinary incontinence - involuntary leakage - for around a month, according to a clinical report published in the Caspian Journal of Internal Medicine. In a desperate DIY fix, he reportedly dripped the glue into his urethra over a period of two weeks, hoping it would physically seal the leak.
Glue hardened into a dense plug
At first, the leakage stopped - at least temporarily. But within four days of ending the applications, the glue fully cured into a dense plug. His urine flow quickly slowed to a trickle before turning into complete urinary retention, meaning he couldn't pee at all - a condition that can cause severe pain and dangerous complications.
The man then endured a full week of constant pain above his pubic bone and in his lower abdomen before finally going to an outpatient clinic, the New York Post reported. On examination, his penis was erect and doctors could feel a rigid foreign object under the skin. They also saw brittle fragments of dried glue at the opening.
Surgeons remove 10cm block
The man ended up on the operating table and had a "10 cm rod-shaped solid block" removed from his penis. Urologists first tried a cystoscopy - inserting a small camera into the urethra - but the passage was totally blocked. While solvents like acetone can sometimes dissolve superglue in places like the ear or nose, doctors said they couldn't use chemicals here. As Live Science noted: "Urethra tissue is very delicate, and inserting anything into this sensitive tube risks damaging it, which can lead to serious infection."
Insertion of foreign bodies is painful, making the practice "relatively rare", the report's authors wrote. Surgeons instead made an incision at the head of the penis, flushed the area with saline for 15 minutes to loosen the glue, then extracted the 10cm block in one piece using forceps.
Full recovery after surgery
The paper called the superglue method "unusual" and noted it was only the fourth reported case of superglue in the urethra in medical literature. While many cases involving foreign objects are linked to sexual gratification, substance abuse or psychological distress, doctors confirmed this patient had no history of psychiatric disorders and acted out of misinformed desperation.
After stitches, his normal urine flow returned immediately - and he made a full recovery six weeks later.
