Recent guidelines have advocated a step-wise treatment of increasing invasiveness in the management of ischaemic priapism though with low-level evidences. In the past, proximal shunts were favoured as first-line treatment. We present an African man who had proximal shunt (cavernoso-spongiosal) three decades ago for ischaemic priapism and subsequently had long-term morbidity over the three decades with adverse effect on his quality of life. Recent guidelines appear to be sound despite their limitations and more invasive cavernoso-spongiosal shunts may be associated with significant long-term morbidities and poor quality of life.