Boo Boos in the Bedroom Are More Common Than You Think

May 14, 2010— -- Love is a battlefield -- complete with head wounds, broken bones, and the occasional penile fracture.

While most sex-related injuries don't require a trip to the doctor, getting hurt in the heat of passion is a pretty common -- but seldom discussed -- problem, sex experts say.

Julieanne Smolinski, 26, a New Yorker and blogger for Lemondrop.com, had her own brush with carnal catastrophe when she was in college.

"I did a kind of accidental back handspring off my boyfriend and cracked myself on the head," she says.

"My boyfriend got the worst of it and 'fractured' his penis. We didn't seek medical attention, [but] later I read that penile fractures can be really serious," she says, wondering in retrospect if they should have taken him to the hospital.

Though they can be embarrassing to report to your doctor, sexual injuries are fairly run-of-the-mill in the emergency department, according to a U.K. poll of one thousand adults.

The study, commissioned by a phone-recycling firm, Phonepiggybank.com, found that a third of Brits reported having a sex-related injury -- five percent admitting that they had to stay home from work while on the mend from one of those bedroom blunders

Most often, these mishaps were sustained while having sex in non-traditional settings, such as on stairs, over kitchen tables, or in closets, or when trying new sexual positions.

ABCnews.com asked sex experts and emergency room doctors to weigh in on the kinds of sexual injuries they encounter most often and how to safeguard against them.