Penile Mondor’s disease is a rare condition where you have penile blood clots. The condition resolves on its own and is not an emergency or life threatening. However having deep vein thrombosis is an emergency condition that needs attention right away because it’s life threatening.
I was under the impression that blood clots in veins can kill no matter where they are?
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I think the very nice way of putting this would be imagine your legs like a motorway, and your penile area as a off road which reconnects into the highway eventually.
If the highway gets blocked, the entire traffic gets blocked (thrombus). Sometimes the pressure will build up and break the clot in the leg or the plasminogens break it down enough, however this is just as bad as this super fast highway is trying to get back to the lungs. When it reaches the lungs it can later cause a blockage known as a pulmonary embolism.
This is also why we call it deep vein thrombosis, as it’s such an important vein that if it gets blocked it can be critical to our health. Our body has literally nowhere to send the blood and when the clots do break free they will simply cause more blockages. Eventually it becomes a pulmonary embolism if it blocks the lungs, and that is fatal.
Now any form of blood clot can cause for an embolism to occur, however permanent m thrombosis can actually be prevented as your body will want to break down the clot as soon as it can. If a clot enters into the more major vein then chances are it’s likely going to meet more plasminogens which will break it down before it becomes a problem.
If it doesn’t break down, it can cause a clot in something more important, but it’s more unlikely if the clot isn’t happening in the main vein. Especially seeming as these bigger veins are a lot more spacious and designed to push more blood through.
Deep veins like the leg veins have a straight ride to the heart and are big. That’s why they are dangerous. Small veins don’t break off as often because the flow is much less.
The clots in the legs that cause problems are in large veins that go more directly to the right side of the heart and then to the lungs. Large clots can form and break off and block blood flow to parts of the lungs which is very dangerous. Smaller clots pretty much anywhere else generally wont make it the lungs, as they have a log way to go and the body has mechanisms for breaking up clots.
When a clot forms in the vein in your legs, the blood that’s behind it is blocked and it wants to get back to the heart as more and more blood pools up behind it like a traffic jam, and as this pressure rises, eventually the clot will break/dislodge and start travelling towards the heart where it can go to the lung and cause a blockage causing the serious condition pulmonary embolism.
Penile vascular tissue however is spongy and so a blood clot will not backup flow as badly because the blood can just flow around the clot through the spongy tissue , and so the blood can return back to the heart without causing to big of a traffic jam, kinda like a detour when there is road works. Because the blood doesn’t back up as badly, the pressure doesn’t rise enough to cause the clot to break/dislodge and get pumped to the heart and then lungs. Instead your body naturally starts dissolving the clot/reabsorbing it
Blood clots kill because they impede blood flow in a major way. If you have a clot in what’s basically a sponge where blood can flow around, it won’t prevent blood from flowing through the rest of your body like a clot in a major artery would.