People got three times more things stuck in vaginas than bums in 2023
A&E departments have seen a rise in people attending with, ahem, ‘delicate’ complaints this year.
New data for England shows there has been an increase in the number of people seeking help for broken penises, a burning sensation while urinating, prolonged erections, and being unable to remove ‘foreign objects’ from intimate areas.
The figures, which cover the year to April 2023, show 73,300 people had a procedure to remove a foreign object during that period.
While those numbers also include things stuck in eyes, ears and noses, the data shows there were 1,502 attendances for ‘foreign body in rectum’, with 5,421 attending due to a ‘foreign body in the vagina’.
Attendances for so-called ‘penis problems’ rose by 34% from 13,911 in 2021/22 to 18,592 in 2022/23, and last year some 20,675 women went to A&E for ‘vagina problems’, a 30% rise on 15,930 the year before.
Elsewhere the figures show a 9% rise in A&E attendances for priapism – a prolonged erection of the penis – with some 373 men needing help for this painful condition last year, up from 342 in 2021/22 and 272 in 2020/21.
Meanwhile, 432 men were seen in emergency rooms in 2022/23 due to ‘rupture of corpus cavernosum of penis’ – also know as a ‘fracture of the penis’ – an uncommon injury which occurs in an erect penis. That’s a 25% rise on the year before.
These are some of the 'delicate' maladies treated in our A&Es
- More than 140,000 people went to English A&Es due to dysuria – a burning, itching or painful sensation when urinating.
- Some 5,728 attended due to phimosis – the inability to retract the foreskin covering the head of the penis.
- There were 737 attendances with symptoms of gonorrhoea, 1,191 for chlamydia.
- Some 12,000 sought help for thrush.
- There were 1,502 attendances for ‘foreign body in rectum’.
- Some 5,421 people attended due to a ‘foreign body in the vagina’.
Earlier this year, analysis found there was a rise in visits to emergency departments for complaints including sore throats, hiccups, coughs and earache.
There were 8.6 million A&E attendances which resulted in the patient being discharged with written advice, while 624,367 people walked out of the hospital before they could be seen and diagnosed – a 22% rise on the year before.
Commenting on the figures, Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: ‘People attend A&Es with an array of issues, including some potentially embarrassing problems. Staff are trained to approach these problems confidentially and with respect.
‘It is vital that if patients are concerned about something and feel they need urgent or emergency care, they should come to A&E.
‘We don’t want patients with potentially important problems to feel deterred.
‘Some symptoms may be signs of a more serious problem, and coming to A&E may be what is needed to diagnose that and receive the necessary and appropriate treatment.’
Dr Tim Cooksley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, added: ‘This data further shows the diversity of presentations that NHS teams manage every day.
‘Fundamentally, these patients have urgent conditions that need timely, respectable care and, as for so many patients currently, this cannot be achieved in overwhelmed urgent and emergency care environments which are extremely distressing for patients.’
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