Chinese surgeons from First People’s Hospital in Longquany District operated on a 12-year-old boy by removing a thermometer stuck in his urethra. They described the medical case in a journal article. Asian Journal of Surgery.
While the boy was masturbating, he inserted a thermometer into his urethra and soon reached the bladder. Nine hours later, the boy could not bear the pain and told his family what had happened. He was in the hospital soon. It required surgery to remove the thermometer – pulling it back through the urethra would have been very traumatic, so doctors had to make a small hole in the abdomen to reach directly into the bladder.
The surgery was successful, but it was not stated whether any complications developed in the future.
Doctors noted that foreign bodies of the urethra are rare in children – mostly adult men come to surgeons with such a problem. According to the report, the boy inserted a thermometer into his penis “out of curiosity about the genitals” and also because of the “lack of sex education in the country”.