Careful picking up your balls, chaps: Boy, 16, loses his TESTICLE after bending down to grab one
Teen’s testicle swings into his body after he bends over to grab golf ball in eye-popping medical case
A teenager left one of his testicles swinging inside his body as he bent over to pick up a golf ball.
The 16-year-old from Utah, USA, suddenly developed pain in his groin after “bent over to retrieve a golf ball” on the green.
After a quick inspection, he noticed that his left testicle was gone and he immediately sought medical attention.
Medics eventually discovered that the unidentified boy’s testicle had retracted much higher than normal and became lodged.
They said this was due to an unusual aspect of the boy’s biology that he carried with him from birth.
Talk about a hole in one! The young golfer’s unusual biology meant that when he leaned over to pick up a ball, he saw one of his testicles get stuck in a tight space in his abdomen
Surgeons in Salt Lake City, who shared the dazzling story in the journal Urology Case Reportsrevealed that he was given pain medication while they examined exactly where his testicle went.
During questioning, the boy denied that he had suffered traumatic injuries to his groin.
However, he informed the medics of the sudden pain he experienced upon picking up the golf ball.
Doctors performed a CT scan in his abdomen and found his left testicle intact, but definitely not where it should have been – hidden higher up in a canal that runs from his scrotum.
When they checked the boy’s medical history, they saw that he was diagnosed with a retractable left testis at age 11.
Retractile describes testes that do not permanently descend into the scrotum as they normally do after puberty.
Instead, they are more mobile and can move higher up the body than usual.
Medics performed keyhole surgery on the area to see if they could return the testis to its location.
They then confirmed that the boy had a condition called patent processus vaginalis that he had developed in utero.
As a boy develops in the womb, the testes begin to grow in the abdomen before descending into their natural lower position.
Normally, the area where the testes developed closes.
But occasionally that doesn’t happen and an internal connection is formed between this area and the scrotum, a formation called an open processus vaginalis.
In the boy’s case, his open processus vaginalis formed only on his left side, while the right one closed normally.
This formed the internal sac that his left testicle could theoretically pop into as he leaned forward to pick up the golf ball.
Surgeons then used small surgical instruments to give the testicle a “firm push” to pop it out and back into the scrotum.
They noted that the testicle appeared undamaged.
The team of doctors later “surgically” anchored his testicle to the scrotum using a suture.
Seven months after surgery, the boy reported that both of his testicles had remained in his scrotum and that he had not experienced any complications from the surgery.
While the case theoretically stems from the boy having a retractable testicle and an open processus vaginalis, doctors don’t know how his injury occurred simply by leaning over to pick up a golf ball.
The case report did not state exactly when the case took place.