Acute Urinary Retention Secondary to Severe Gonococcal Balanoblennorrhea

Gonococcal genitourinary infection in males is usually manifested by urethritis with dysuria and purulent urethral discharge. Balanoblennorrhea (gonorrheal inflammation of the glans penis) may rarely accompany urethritis, and prostatitis and epididymitis are infrequent complications.1 However, as the current pandemic of gonorrhea involves increasingly larger numbers of young children (reference 2 and personal communication from J. H. Blount, 1980), it is probable that more unusual manifestations of both local and disseminated disease will be faced by the pediatrician. The child reported here developed severe genitourinary gonorrhea with such extreme local inflammation as to necessitate hospitalization and surgical relief of acute urinary retention.