A man suffering from dementia is being treated after putting a number of rubber bands onto his penis and it began to rot.

“Strangulation cases like this are thankfully rare,” Dr. Fardod O’Kelly, a urological surgeon at Beacon Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, told the Daily Mail of the grisly case, which was reported in the medical journal Urology Case Reports.

O’Kelly added, “This is important as the arterial compression means no blood flow in, and that means no oxygen supply, so the organ begins to die.”

The 81-year-old initially checked into hospital due to diabetic ketoacidosis (an often deadly sign of low insulin levels), it was only later that he revealed he’d put on a number of bands like cock rings and then left it for three days.

An exam later revealed that his member had started to turn purple and yellow; a sign of rot.

According to the NY Post:

In order to prevent further degradation, doctors burned out the dead flesh with a hot wire and excised it with scalpels. They also inserted a catheter into the unfortunate soul’s urethra to drain the reservoir of urine that had pooled because the patient’s groin garrote had prevented him from peeing.

With the help of antibiotics, the patient recovered within five days. However, he failed to appear at his follow-up appointment two weeks later, according to the medical report.

Professionals stress that this type of action could be seriously detrimental, and could even result in the penis “falling off”, but O’Kelly claims he’s not seen that happened as of yet.

“An organ like the penis could probably tolerate this for a couple of hours (if you don’t pass out with the pain), however eventually the pressure becomes too great and the arteries become compressed as well,” O’Kelly claimed.