Abstract:

Background: Sickle cell Disease as one of the haematological disorders has shown to be associated with various changes of circulating erythrocyte, haemolytic anaemia, Vaso occlusion and vascular endothelial dysfunction. Vaso occlusive crisis is one of the common presenting symptoms of patients with SCD. It is the most leading cause for hospitalization among SCD patients and one of the common presenting symptoms and prolonged to complication is priapism.

Objective: To determine the prevalence of priapism and its associated factors among sickle cell disease patients at Bugando Medical Centre
Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out on 226 SCD male patients in 2023. Data was collected using structured self-administered questionnaires and information obtained were analysed by STATA® 15.

Results: A total of 226 individuals with median age of 10±6 years were interviewed. The prevalence of priapism was 81 (35.8%). The earliest priapism episode occurred when the respondents were young with majority 60 (74.1%) being at the age of 2-5 years and the last episode being week/months from the day of the interview 58 (71.6%). Priapism was found to be more associated with infections such as UTI and Malaria 35 (43.2%), (OR;2.71;95%CL;(1.01-7.23), p=0.047, comorbid conditions like hypertension, HIV and hematological malignancies 29 (35.8%) (OR;7.79;95%CL;(3.39-17.58), p=0.000 and long-term use of medications like antihypertensive as well as antidepressants 23 (28.4%). 58 (71.6%), (OR;3.05;95%CL;(1.54-6.04), p=0.001, patients were not aware of the complications associated with priapism and those who knew mentioned impotence as the sole complication of priapism.

Conclusion: Given the obtained prevalence (35.8%) of priapism amongst sickle cell patients in Bugando medical Centre and their poor knowledge and low awareness on the complications, there is a need to create more awareness about this complication amongst sickle cell disease patients in order to stem the incidence of impotence and infertility amongst them.