119 Sex Toy ER Visits a Week, and 7 in 10 Are Toys That Got Stuck: Federal Injury Data, 2019-2025
From 2019 to 2025, US emergency departments treated an estimated 43,382 visits by adults with injuries associated with sex toys, about 6,197 a year, or 119 a week. It's the first estimate of sex toy injuries using federal injury data from after 2021. In 73% of visits the toy was stuck inside the body, which confirms what earlier studies found and is exactly the problem a flared base is designed to prevent.
Key findings
- 43,382 ER visits in seven years. That's about 6,197 a year, or roughly 119 a week across the US (95% CI 34,389 to 52,375, based on 941 sampled cases).
- 73% were a toy stuck inside the body (95% CI 69% to 76%). Add rings stuck on the penis and it's 82%.
- 62% involved the anus or rectum. For butt plugs and anal beads, 95% of visits were a toy that couldn't come out. For vibrators it was 91%.
- More than 1 in 4 stuck-toy visits ended in a hospital admission or transfer (28%, 95% CI 24% to 32%).
- Cock rings were involved in an estimated 5,671 visits, 66% of all penis and scrotum injuries in the data.
- The typical person is 36. 61% were men.
- No clear rising trend. Visits rose 32% between 2019-2021 and 2023-2025, but all adult injury visits in the same data rose 23%, so as a share of injuries the rise is about 7%.
How many people end up in the ER because of a sex toy
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission runs the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), a sample of about 100 hospital emergency departments whose records are weighted up to national estimates. We pulled every adult record from 2019 to 2025 that involved a sex toy and found 941 cases, which represent an estimated 43,382 visits nationwide.
The yearly numbers move between 4,914 and 7,860. The average for 2023-2025 was 32% higher than for 2019-2021, but adult injury visits of every kind in NEISS rose 23% over the same period. Measured against all injuries, sex toy visits went up only about 7%, and the confidence intervals for the two periods overlap. So there's no clear sign these injuries are becoming more common.
What goes wrong: mostly, the toy gets stuck
We sorted every visit by what actually happened. One problem dwarfs the rest.
In 73% of visits, a toy went inside the body and couldn't be pulled back out. Rings and cages stuck on the penis or scrotum add another 10%. Tears, bruising and bleeding account for 10%. Burns, shocks and battery problems are rare: only 4 records in seven years, too few for a reliable estimate.
| Toy type | Estimated visits | Toy stuck inside |
|---|---|---|
| Butt plugs and anal beads | 6,277 | 95% (91% to 99%) |
| Vibrators | 11,618 | 91% (87% to 95%) |
| Dildos | 5,782 | 85% (79% to 92%) |
| Sex toy, type not recorded | 12,338 | 71% (64% to 77%) |
The pattern matches what sexual health groups have said for years. Planned Parenthood warns that any toy used in the butt needs a flared base "or some other way to pull the toy out, so it can't accidentally slip all the way in." A straight, smooth toy with no base has nothing to stop it.
Which toys send people to the ER
Vibrators top the list at an estimated 11,618 visits, followed by butt plugs and anal beads (6,277), dildos (5,782) and cock rings (5,671). In 12,338 visits the record only says "sex toy" without naming the type. One likely reason vibrators lead: most are made for vaginal or external use, with no base at all, and 91% of vibrator visits were one stuck inside.
No record in seven years mentioned a sex machine, a thrusting machine or an automatic stroker. That doesn't show they're safer. ER notes often don't name the product, and these machines are much less common than vibrators, so they could simply be too rare to show up in a sample of about 100 hospitals.
Where on the body, and how serious it gets
| Body site | Estimated visits | 95% CI | Admitted or transferred |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anus or rectum | 26,959 | 21,105 to 32,813 | 30% |
| Penis or scrotum | 7,876 | 5,648 to 10,103 | 14% |
| Vagina or vulva | 6,156 | 4,594 to 7,718 | 8% |
| Urethra or bladder | 1,535 | 911 to 2,158 | 17% |
| Other or not recorded | 857* | 413 to 1,300 | 9% |
Rectal cases are the most common and the most serious. 30% of them ended in a hospital admission or a transfer to another hospital. Vaginal cases were admitted far less often (8%), and penis and scrotum cases sat in between (14%).
| What happened at the ER | Estimated visits | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Treated and sent home | 31,184 | 72% |
| Admitted or transferred | 9,956 | 23% |
| Held for observation | 730* | 2% |
| Left without being seen | 1,448 | 3% |
| Died | 1 record, not attributed to a toy (see below) | |
One death was recorded. The person had a constriction ring on, but the recorded cause was cardiorespiratory failure with suspected stimulant use, so we don't treat it as a death caused by a sex toy.
Who it happens to
Every adult age group shows up in the data. The median age was 36, and people aged 50 and over made up more than a quarter of visits. Men accounted for 61% (95% CI 56% to 65%). Alcohol or drugs were recorded in only a small share of visits (1% and 3%), though ER records often leave this out.
How this compares with earlier research
This is, as far as we can find, the first analysis of sex toy injuries in NEISS that covers 2020 to 2025. A PubMed search on 21 October 2026 found no published study using data after 2021.
- Griffin and McGwin (2009), Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy: an estimated 8,415 sexual stimulation device injuries from 1995 to 2006.
- Forrester (2021), Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy: an estimated 18,547 vibrator and 6,468 dildo injuries from 2000 to 2019. The device couldn't be removed from the rectum in 71.3% of vibrator and 83.6% of dildo injuries.
- Sheets et al. (2023), Cureus: rectal foreign bodies from 2012 to 2021, where massage devices and vibrators were the most common object (22.7%).
Our yearly estimate is higher than these older studies. Part of that is method: we count every type of sex toy, including rings, butt plugs and urethral sounds, and since 2019 NEISS narratives can run up to 400 characters instead of 142, so more cases can be identified. The direction of the findings is the same: stuck toys, mostly rectal, dominate.
Roxie's take: how to keep a toy from sending you to the ER
What jumps out at me in these numbers is how boring the cause is. Most of them are a toy with no base doing exactly what a toy with no base does. So before a friend buys anything, this is what I tell them.
- Anything that goes in your butt needs a flared base or a handle. The base should be clearly wider than the part that goes inside. Before clicking the buy button, check the listing says it's made for anal use and has a flared base. If it doesn't, keep that toy for vaginal or outside use.
- Small vibrators and love eggs need a cord or loop you can pull. If a little bullet vibrator doesn't have one, don't put it anywhere you can't easily reach.
- Use lots of lube and go slow. The anus doesn't make its own lubrication, and rushing is how toys slip and tissue tears.
- Pick a stretchy ring, and take it off within 30 minutes. The Sexual Medicine Society of North America says rings are typically worn for less than 30 minutes and warns that metal ones can get stuck. Go for soft silicone or a ring with a quick-release snap, and never fall asleep with a ring or cage on.
- If something gets stuck, go in. Don't go fishing for it with kitchen tongs or wait it out for days. ER staff across the US see roughly 119 of these every week, so nobody there is going to laugh at you, and getting help early is a lot easier on your body.
- On a sex machine, start shallow and keep the stop button in reach. Check the dildo locks onto the machine properly, and remember stroke depth and speed matter as much as the toy itself. If you're shopping for one, here's how the different types compare.
And please don't let a chart like this scare you off toys. About 6,197 ER visits a year sounds like a lot until you think about how many people own one. Pick a toy made for the way you'll actually use it, keep the lube close, and the only thing you'll need to explain is the extra-large lube bottle in your shopping cart.
Stay foxy! Your Roxie
Methods
Data. NEISS public data files for 2019 to 2025 from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, downloaded on 21 October 2026. NEISS is a stratified probability sample of US hospital emergency departments, and each case carries a statistical weight for national estimates.
Case finding. We pulled every record with product code 1610 (massage devices or vibrators, the code CPSC uses for sex toys) or with a sex toy term in the case narrative, such as vibrator, dildo, butt plug, anal beads, cock ring, penis pump or sex toy. That gave 1392 candidate records. We limited the study to adults 18 and over, so 125 records involving people under 18 were excluded without review.
Coding. Each candidate was coded by documented rules into sex toy, improvised object (sexual use of a household object, which we report separately and don't count) or not relevant (for example back massagers, massage guns and condoms). Sex toy cases were then coded by toy type, body site and what went wrong. 941 cases were coded as sex toy-associated.
Validation. The coding rules were checked against an independent second coder who coded cases blind, without seeing the rule output. The second coder was an AI model given the same written codebook. On a held-out sample of 150 records that were not used to tune the rules, agreement on whether a case was sex toy-associated was 98.7% (Cohen's kappa 0.97), with 100% recall. Agreement was 94% on toy type (kappa 0.93), 100% on body site, and 91% on what went wrong (kappa 0.81). The two disagreements were homemade objects the rules counted as toys, so totals may be overstated by about 2%.
Estimates. National estimates are sums of NEISS case weights. 95% confidence intervals use Taylor-series variance estimation with NEISS strata, treating each hospital as a cluster across all years. Following CPSC guidance, estimates under 1,200, based on fewer than 20 cases, or with a coefficient of variation over 33% are marked unstable (*).
How this was made. sexmachine.pro did this analysis with AI-assisted tools, including the case-coding rules, the statistics and the first draft of this report. Every figure on this page comes straight from the analysis files, which you can download below. Read more in our AI disclosure.
Our interests. sexmachine.pro earns affiliate commissions on some sex machines and toys. That played no part in the analysis: every figure comes from federal data, and the coded data is published so anyone can check it.
Limitations
- NEISS only counts emergency department visits. People treated by their own doctor, at urgent care, or not at all aren't included, so the true number of injuries is higher.
- NEISS records show that an injury was associated with a product, not that the product caused it or was faulty.
- Narratives are short and written by hospital staff. Many don't name the toy type, and some homemade objects may be described as toys.
- CPSC updates the hospital sample over time, so year-to-year changes should be read with care.
- Adults only. Injuries involving minors were excluded by design.
Download the data and cite this study
Everything here is free to use under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Please link back to this page.
- Weighted national estimates (CSV): every table on this page, with 95% confidence intervals and CPSC stability flags.
- Coded case list (CSV): one row per case, with the CPSC case number, NEISS fields, weight, and our coding. Narratives are not included, but you can look up any case by its CPSC case number.
- Full dataset, code and codebook on Zenodo (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23529076): the permanent, citable version.
Suggested citation
sexmachine.pro research (2026). Sex toy-associated emergency department visits in the US, adults 18+, 2019-2025 (NEISS analysis) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23529076
Questions about the method, or found an error? Email [email protected].
Sources
- US Consumer Product Safety Commission. National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) data, 2019-2025.
- CPSC. Explanation of NEISS estimates (reliability rules).
- Griffin R, McGwin G Jr. Sexual stimulation device-related injuries. J Sex Marital Ther. 2009.
- Forrester MB. Vibrator and dildo injuries treated at emergency departments. J Sex Marital Ther. 2021.
- Sheets NW, et al. Rectal foreign bodies: a 10-year review of the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System. Cureus. 2023.
- Planned Parenthood. Sex toys.
- Sexual Medicine Society of North America. Different types of penile constriction rings.
Nothing on this page is medical advice. If you're hurt, or something is stuck, see a doctor or go to an emergency department.