Pain and Swelling in Your Scrotum? It Could Be Epididymitis

x

You’re understandably alarmed when pain and swelling develop in your scrotum and, barring direct trauma, you’re at a loss as to why these symptoms came on.

Scrotal pain and inflammation are often tied back to a common condition called epididymitis, which affects about 600,000 men in the United States each year. 

To help get you on the road to relief, board-certified urologist Dr. Robert J. Cornell wants to review what epididymitis is — including its causes, symptoms, and treatments. Let’s dive in.

What is your epididymis?

A great place to start this conversation is to explain the role that your epididymis plays in your reproductive health. Your scrotum acts as a protected space that houses:

• Testes
• Blood vessels
• Nerves
• Spermatic cord
• Epididymis

Your epididymis is a coiled tube that attaches to your testes, and its primary role is to provide passage between your testes and your vas deferens. Your testes produce sperm, and then they release them into your epididymis. This tube contains three sections, and as the sperm travel through, they mature and develop their ability to swim forward.

Amazingly, if you stretched out this coiled tube, your epididymis can measure up to 20 feet, which is why it takes sperm between 10 and 15 days to travel through.

When epididymitis strikes

Anytime you see the suffix -itis attached to a word, it typically means inflammation. In the case of epididymitis, it means that there’s inflammation in the epididymis.

This inflammation can lead to:

• Mild to severe pain in your scrotum
• Swollen testicles
• Pain when you urinate or ejaculate
• Blood in your ejaculate
• Fever and chills

These symptoms can be acute or chronic. Acute symptoms come on suddenly; in chronic cases of epididymitis, symptoms develop gradually and last for 6 weeks or more.

Common causes of epididymitis

Epididymitis has several causes. Among the most common causes are sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including gonorrhea and chlamydia. Each year in the US, there are about 2.2 million new cases of gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis, so the potential for epididymitis is high. 

Other causes of epididymitis include:

• Urinary tract infections
• Backflow of infected urine
• Prostatitis
• A blockage in your urethra, perhaps due to benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH)
• Trauma to your groin

Less commonly, if you're taking certain medications for an arrhythmia, namely amiodarone, one of the potential side effects is epididymitis.

Finding relief from epididymitis

As you might imagine, how we go about treating the inflammation in your epididymis depends upon the underlying cause. For example, a quick course of antibiotics for STI-related epididymitis is usually sufficient.

If your epididymitis is related to something else, such as medications, then we address the issue from that angle and work toward finding a different dose or a different medication.

Epididymitis doesn't usually go away on its own, so it’s important to come see us as soon as the problem develops. If you suspect that you have epididymitis, schedule an appointment with us at our Houston office today