Surgeons at a hospital in Lithuania spent over three hours saving the life of a man who, for some reason, had swallowed more than a kilogram of metallic objects over the last month.
Lithuanian media recently reported the shocking case of a man who arrived at the Klaipėda University Hospital in the Baltic port of Klaipeda complaining of severe abdominal pain but conveniently failed to mention that he had swallows over a kilogram of metal objects over the last 30 days. An X-ray examination revealed that the man’s stomach was full of metal objects of all shapes and sizes, including nails, screws, and blades. They prepped the man, whose identity has not been revealed, for emergency surgery and spent over 3 hours removing the metal objects.
Photo: Edge2Edge Media/Unsplash
“We have never seen anything like this,” Algirdas Slepavicius, chief surgeon at Klaipeda hospital, told local reporters.
Surgeons at Klaipėda University Hospital get around a couple of dozen cases of foreign bodies discovered in people’s gastrointestinal tract, so they are fairly common, but the sheer quantity found in this Lithuanian man’s stomach made the case unprecedented in nature. About 80% of foreign bodies are eliminated naturally, nearly 20% of them are removed endoscopically, and less than 1% require surgery.
Although the procedure itself is not very complex in nature, the sheer quantity of metallic objects in the patient’s stomach made it difficult. Doctors were concerned that the sharp objects could perforate the stomach and put his life at risk, so they operated as quickly as possible.
Photo: Klaipėda University Hospital/Facebook
The procedure took three hours to complete, during which time they removed dozens of objects, reaching from a couple of millimeters, up to 10 centimeters in size, including nails, screws and blades. All the while, doctors used the X-ray machine to make sure they removed all the metallic objects, down to the smallest ones.
Doctors haven’t been able to find out too much from the patient about why his stomach was full of metal, but apparently, he had started swallowing the metallic objects about a month ago, right around the time he stopped drinking alcohol…
The unnamed patient is in stable condition following the surgery, and he has been provided with psychological assistance.
Photo: Klaipėda University Hospital/Facebook
From whistling party toys to magnets and toothbrushes, we’ve seen people accidentally swallow all kinds of stuff, but this case takes the cake!
