After giving up alcohol, a Lithuanian man over a month swallowed more than a kilogram of nails, screws, nuts and knives, which had to be removed from his stomach during emergency surgery, after he was admitted for severe abdominal pains, reports MedicalBrief.
He had been swallowing the metal objects for a month after deciding to stop drinking, doctors said. Some of the objects retrieved during an emergency three-hour operation at Klaipeda University Hospital (KUH) were 10cm long, according to Lithuania's LRT public broadcaster.
The man had not told the medics that he had been swallowing nails, bolts, nuts, knives, wood screws and other similar items for some time. “It simply came to our notice then. The foreign bodies themselves are not a very rare pathology, but such a quantity is a unique case, ” said Šarūnas Dailidėnas, a surgeon at the KUL Abdominal and Endocrine Surgery Department.
He explained the man had damaged the front wall of his stomach by consuming the foreign bodies, which filled an entire surgical tray. “During the three-hour operation with X-ray control, all foreign bodies, even the smallest ones, in the patient's stomach were removed.”
According to the doctor, usually about 80% of foreign bodies swallowed by patients are eliminated naturally, but about 10%-20% have to be pulled endoscopically and only about 1% have to undergo surgery.
Medics were tasked with making sure they had fished out the sharp metals by regularly scanning the patient's stomach. The man is reported to be in a stable condition, and is being monitored at KUH.
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