It was a horn-ographic experience.
A patient in China redefined being “horny” after his penis sprouted a 2-inch-long, calcified growth, which later turned out to be cancerous.
[Warning: Graphic Images]
“Clinical examination showed a conical lesion projecting from the anterior surface of the glans penis,” wrote Xi Zhang and Haoying Shi, of the Second Hospital of Shanxi Medical University’s urology department, about the protuberance in the Asian Journal of Surgery.
Per the graphic study, the unnamed 43-year-old patient reported to the hospital in Taiyuan after developing a “hard” and “yellowish-brown” nodule.
He had previously gotten a “rice-sized” growth removed from the tip of his manhood three years earlier, only to have another spring up in its place three months later like a horned hydra. Over the next three years, the man-antler grew to a whopping 2-inches long and 1-inch across, and extended from his foreskin to past the urethra with several “mass-like protrusions” under the base, per the study.
Horn-ographic images show the penile lesion, which looks brown and conical like a ram’s horn or pumpkin stem.
The doctors diagnosed the man with a cutaneous horn, a mass of keratin — the protein that forms skin, hair and nails — that’s often analogized to a horn due to its tendency to form on one’s head. Penile growths, meanwhile, are exceedingly rare, accounting for only “4.2 to 5.5% of all cutaneous horns,” per the study.
The patient’s case was especially peculiar as he wasn’t taking medication and had no history of sexually transmitted infections, which are a major risk factor for cutaneous horns, along with possessing excess foreskin, poor hygiene and penile injuries, the Daily Mail reported. Interestingly, these manhood-adorning horns tend to pop up within one year of circumcision, leading experts to believe that the procedure may be a cause.
Either way, due to the risk of cancer, doctors quickly removed the penile protrusion by amputating the mass and also extracting around a half-inch of tissue from under its base.
It’s a good thing the patient underwent this second round of whack-a-mole. A subsequent analysis of the removed mass revealed that he had squamous cell carcinoma — the second most common strain of skin cancer, affecting 1.8 million people in the US each year.
Thankfully, the lucky fellow was deemed cancer-free following the operation, from which he has since fully recovered.
This isn’t the first time a cutaneous growth has cropped up in an unlikely place. In 2019, a UK man baffled doctors after sprouting a 5-inch cancerous “dragon horn” on his back, despite having no history of skin cancer.