According to a report by the American Journal of Case Reports, a man had his penis turned black after he injected it with cocaine.
The 35-year-old Hispanic man went to the ER with pain in his penis and scrotum three days after injecting the drug into a penile vein.
The doctor said his penis was swollen, black, and had a foul-smelling discharge.
They said the man had a long history of drug use.
The doctors said that cocaine is one of the most dangerous drugs. It is highly addictive.
The drug can be snorted, smoked, or dissolved and injected into a vein. It can cause gangrene and the death of body tissue when injected. The doctors said that cocaine can be cut with a de-worming drug called levamisole, which causes blood vessel inflammation.
The man told the doctors that he had injected cocaine in the same vein at least twice in the past two weeks without any problems.
Drug users often use new injection sites when arm veins become damaged, because the dorsal vein is an unusual place to inject.
The blue arrow is a sign of ulceration. Hazanfar et al., Am J Case Rep, 2022.
The man wouldn't have surgery to remove the dying tissue. He was treated with a cocktail of antibiotics for five days and then a further five days with oral ones.
The man refused drug rehabilitation treatment and was lost to follow-up after, the doctors said.
The doctors said thatvenous drug users should be counseled to seek help and that cocaine cessation is the only definitive treatment.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 5 million Americans reported having used cocaine in the last year. It said that cocaine was involved in nearly 1 in 5 overdose deaths.
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