A man swallowed a bone, and 15 years later, doctors found it in his appendix
The diagnosis: This time, when medical personnel questioned the man, he recalled that approximately 15 years earlier, he had accidentally swallowed a piece of a long bone containing edible marrow.
Key points
- When the doctors looked inside the patient's abdomen with a laparoscope — a long, flexible tool with a camera at one end — they saw that the appendix was enlarged.
- The patient: A 45-year-old man in Italy The symptoms: The man went to the emergency room because he had a sharp pain in his lower-right abdomen.
- At this second visit, doctors performed an abdominal X-ray and found a round object near the upper right of the man's pelvis.
What happened next: When doctors examined the man, the type of pain and the location of his discomfort suggested that he might have appendicitis, or inflammation of the appendix.
His doctors then performed abdominal ultrasound scans and found that the man's abdominal organs, including the appendix, appeared normal, with no signs of inflammation.
Additional details
- Even though the patient had acute pain in his lower-right abdomen, he did not show signs of peritonitis, such as fever, nausea, symptoms of dehydration and an elevated heart rate, according to a report of his case.
- Whether they enter the organ depends on the size of the opening into the appendix where it connects to the colon (which can vary between individuals), the dimensions of the ingested object, and the appendix's position in the body at the time.
- Inside the appendix was a hardened mass of fecal matter, called a fecaloma, which surrounded a long bone.
- The report does not mention if the man sought treatment immediately after swallowing this bone.
- In the United States annually, about 120,000 people — roughly 90% of whom are children — are treated for ingesting foreign objects, and most of the objects are swallowed accidentally.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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