| Case Report | Korean J Pain 2010 December; Vol. 23, No. 4: 274-277 pISSN 2005-9159 eISSN 2093-0569 DOI：10.3344/kjp.2010.23.4.274 Ejaculatory Failure after Unilateral Neurolytic Celiac Plexus Block 1Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, 2Research Institute, Yonsei University Health System, Seoul, Korea Seo Kyung Shin, MD1, Tae Dong Kweon, MD1,2, Sang Hee Ha, MD1, and Kyung Bong Yoon, MD1,2 Abdominal pain associated with chronic pancreatitis is often difficult to control with analgesics and can be severely debilitating with significant impairment of quality of life. In these patients, neurolytic celiac plexus block (NCPB) is an effective treatment option with a low complication rate. However, there is a risk of ejaculatory failure after NCPB, which may be a problem in patients with a long life expectancy. We report a case of ejaculatory failure after unilateral NCPB in a patient with chronic pancreatitis. (Korean J Pain 2010; 23: 274-277) Key Words: chronic pancreatitis, ejaculatory failure, neurolytic celiac plexus block. Chronic pancreatic pain can be caused not only by ma- lignancy, but also benign disease. Regardless of the cause, pancreatic pain is often difficult to manage even with strong analgesics and can be debilitating to many patients. Despite it being an invasive procedure, neurolytic celiac plexus block (NCPB) is reported to be an effective treat- ment option with a low complication rate for patients with non-malignant abdominal pain that is not controlled with analgesics [1-4]. Common complications of NCPB are hypotension, di- arrhea and local pain at the injection site [5]. Among the uncommon complications, ejaculatory failure has been re- ported very rarely [6,7], and its significance is often over- looked due to short life expectancies in terminal cancer patients. We report a case of ejaculatory failure in a pa- tient who received unilateral NCPB for the treatment of pain due to chronic pancreatitis. CASE REPORT A 45-year-old male patient was referred to our pain clinic during admission for abdominal pain control due to chronic pancreatitis. He had been diagnosed with diabetes mellitus type 2, liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcino- ma due to chronic alcoholism 5 years ago and was being followed up without any viable tumor recurrence after hav- ing received transcatheter arterial chemoembolization. His daily medications were 2 mg of glimepiride for diabetes, 10 mg of zolpidem tartrate and 75 mg of trazodone for de- pression and anxiety, and 10 mg of alfuzosin for benign prostatic hyperplasia. He had made frequent visits to the emergency room complaining of severe abdominal pain, and was admitted to the department of internal medicine for pain control and conservative management. The patient's chief complaint was continuous epi- Received October 21, 2010. Revised November 3, 2010. Accepted November 3, 2010. Correspondence to: Kyung Bong Yoon, MD, PhD Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 134, Sinchon-dong, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 120-752, Korea Tel: ＋82-2-2227-4193, Fax: ＋82-2-2227-7897, E-mail: kbyoon@yuhs.ac This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright ⓒ The Korean Pain Society, 2010