A Vietnamese hospital recently reported the extremely rare case of a 24-year-old man who had a wooden chopstick lodged in his eye socket for three weeks without noticing.

The unnamed man was admitted to the Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Vietnam’s Can Tho Province when he came in with symptoms of pain and swelling in his left eye. The 24-year-old patient told doctors that he had been experiencing the symptoms for about three weeks but they had gotten worse in recent days. He had previously sought medical help at another facility in his hometown, but after assessing his vision and checking for foreign objects, they prescribed medicine that proved ineffective. This led the man to the Can Tho University Hospital, where doctors once again confirmed that he had 10/10 vision, with no signs of eyeball injury. However, the left eye did appear swollen and there was a small pus discharge from the corner of his left eye. A subsequent CT scan showed that he had a 9-cm-long foreign body lodged in his eye socket.

Photo: Juan Encalada/Unsplash

A quick examination revealed that the mysterious object appeared to be a wooden chopstick that had penetrated from the soft tissue outside the left orbit, through the upper wall of the maxillary sinus, and destroyed the lateral nasal wall. Asked if he had any idea how the chopstick may have gotten stuck in his left eyeball, the shocked patient could only recall a “collision” with a friend on an alcohol-fueled night of partying around the time his pain and swelling began. However, he did not explicitly recall having a wooden chopstick pierce his sinuses or the pain associated with such a brutal incident.

Photo: Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy

The doctors managed to safely remove the wooden chopstick from the 24-year-old’s left eye socket by performing a Caldwell-Luc operation and performed a paranasal endoscopy to ensure that no other foreign bodies remained to cause an infection. In this case, the chopstick was not clean, as it had been used to consume food, so a thorough cleaning of the wound was essential to the patient’s well-being.

The patient was extremely lucky that the wooden chopstick missed his eye, but doctors warn that such injuries are very dangerous and should be handled by medical professionals as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, in this particular case, the man was oblivious to his injury after consuming too much alcohol.

Photo: Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy

Believe it or not, such incidents are not as rare as you may think. A few years ago, we wrote about a Taiwanese woman who had plastic chopsticks embedded in her skull for a week before noticing that something was wrong, and a couple of years back, we wrote about another Vietnamese man who had a chopstick lodged in his skull for five months without even knowing.