In the first recorded incidence of such a case, doctors are reporting in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that a 21 year old man has suffered a permanent semi-erection due to having the words “borow be salaamat” (good luck with your journeys) tattooed on the upper side of his penis. He also had the first-initial of his girlfriend’s name tattooed on the glans (bulbous tip) of his penis. Though not certain why the tattooing caused the erectile state, the doctors, according to ABC news, suspect that it has something to do with an interference of the transfer of blood flow due to the needle used to make the tattoo, going too deep into the skin.
According to LiveScience, an erection is normally caused by the body causing entrance valves to open allowing blood to flow into the penis from arteries, at which point it is held in by tiny exit valves. To release the erection, the exit valves are opened allowing the blood to flow out again via smaller veins. In the case of this particular patient, it appears that the needle damaged some of the exit valves leaving them permanently closed. They also theorized that the tattooing procedure might have damaged the veins themselves, leaving no exit path. Either way, the end result was that blood could get in, but not out. Fortunately for the patient, an Iranian man who told doctors he’d been experiencing the semi-erection for almost three months, the erection wasn’t full, which would have required emergency surgery to correct. A permanent semi-erection is known in medical circles as nonischemic priapism, and normally occurs under different circumstances such as injury or improper growth of the penis. It’s also most common in boys, rather than adult men and in most cases tends to resolve itself over time.
To correct the problem, which the patient said was not painful (once the tattoo itself healed) doctors tried implanting a shunt to allow the blood to be released, but that proved unsuccessful. Afterwards, the patient apparently decided that he’d had enough treatment and left without seeking further help. Before he left though, he told the doctors he had no regrets and that his penis worked fine the way it was.
At the end of the journal article, the doctors who had studied the problem with the patient and tried to correct it, summed up their opinion on the whole matter by suggesting that people should not have their penises tattooed.