Penile Skin Bridges after Circumcision

Georgios Kampouroglou; Konstantinos Nikas

Department of Pediatric Surgery, Agia Sophia Children’s Hospital, Athens, Greece

Correspondence: Address for Correspondence:Georgios Kampouroglou, MD, Agia Sophia Children’s Hospital, Thivon and Papadiamantopoulou, 11527 Athens, GreeceE-mail:

Received: 2015 June 24; Accepted: 2015 July 2

APSP J Case Rep. 2015 Sep 1; 6(3): 33

Copyright

Copyright © 2015 AJCR

Dear Sir,

Penile skin bridges are adhesion between penile shaft skin and the glans penis after circumcision.[1] They may tether the circumcised penis during erections, causing deformity and occasionally pain.[2] Skin bridges constitute healed surgical wounds and require division for correction.[1]

We herein present a healthy 13-year-old adolescent, who complaint of tightening and tugging of his penis during erections. He was circumcised at the age of three year. Clinical examination revealed three skin bridges at 3, 11 and 12 o’clock position, with a width of about 2-3 mm each. These acted as bridles during erections (Fig. 1). The bridges were surgically excised under general anesthesia using electrocautery, with no bleeding. There was no recurrence three months after surgery.


[Figure ID: F1] Figure 1: Penile skin bridges.

The etiology of this condition remains unknown. Several possible factors have been proposed, such as injury to the glans at the time of circumcision or incomplete separation of the inner preputial skin.[2,3] During healing, the shaft skin can adhere to the glans and in some cases the adhesions separate partially at the corona to form bridges.[4,5] In order to prevent the formation of penile skin bridges, careful suturing and good dressing at the time of circumcision should be done. Small bridges are narrow and avascular. These can be divided with the use of a silver nitrate stick. On the other hand, the thicker more vascular ones require the use of electrocautery as done in index case.

Footnotes

Source of Support: Nil

Conflict of Interest: None declared

References
1. Snodgrass W. Extensive skin bridging with glans epithelium replacement by penile shaft skin following newborn circumcision. J Pediatr Urol. 2006; 2:555-8.
2. Kaplan GW. Complications of circumcision. Urol Clin North Am. 1983; 10:543-9.
3. Saihaye VU, Goswami AK, Sharma SK. Skin Bridge - a complication of paediatric circumcision. Br J Urol. 1990;66:214.
4. Kamal BA. Penile skin bridges: causes and prevention. Int Surg. 2009; 94:35-7.
5. Sody A. Naimer SA, Peleg R, Meidvidovski Y. Office management of penile skin bridges with electrocautery. J Am Board Fam Pract. 2002; 15:485–8.

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Copyright (c) 2015 APSP Journal of Case Reports

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

ISSN: 2218-8185

We are now in process to use new version of Open Journal System. Submission are now open on our new website. Please CLICK HERE to divert to our new manuscript management system. You are required to register an author account before making any submission.