A man experienced intense pain after inadvertently swallowing a toothpick while sleeping. The 29-year-old sought medical attention at A&E due to severe abdominal discomfort, initially unclear of the cause. The pain, concentrated in the lower abdomen, worsened after consuming a meal that included chicken.
After a CT scan revealed a 3.7cm foreign object in his abdomen, doctors suspected it was a bone accidentally ingested during his meal. Subsequent emergency laparoscopy uncovered a wooden toothpick that had pierced his bowel.
The medical team successfully removed the toothpick, finding that the area had self-sealed, requiring the application of surgifoam to control bleeding. Fortunately, no further damage was caused by the foreign object.
During the consultation, the patient recollected falling asleep with a toothpick in his mouth the night before the symptoms appeared, for reasons unknown. Following the operation in Saudi Arabia, he was discharged three days later in stable condition.
The incident highlighted the potential dangers of toothpick ingestion, as evidenced by a review indicating a nearly 10% mortality rate in such cases. In a separate unusual occurrence, doctors in Indonesia were astonished when a 54-year-old patient presented with tweezers lodged in his penis, requiring delicate extraction procedures to address the issue.
A case study of the tweezers incident emphasized the risks associated with self-harm practices involving foreign object insertion, stressing the importance of prompt medical intervention for such cases.
