Doctors in India have removes as many as 63 steel spoon handles from the stomach of a man who they believe had become addicted to swallowing cutlery.
The patient, identified only by his first name, Vijay, was rushed to a hospital at the weekend after complaining of excruciating stomach pain and underwent emergency surgery to remove the metal objects.
Per Second News gathered that the man swallowed the steel over the years.
The 32-year-old man was unable to eat or drink and complained of feeling weak at the time of admission, prompting doctors to take X-rays and CT scans to determine the cause of the pain, a doctor at Evan hospital in northern Muzaffarnagar city said on Wednesday.
The doctor said after initial examination of the scans found a cluster of foreign objects in his stomach.
They immediately performed a laparotomy — a surgical incision into his abdominal cavity — and removed the metal spoon handles one by one over a period of more than two hours.
“After further inspection, we realised the foreign objects were steel spoons. We were shocked to see so many spoons in his stomach,” Dr Rakesh Khurana, the surgeon who performed the operation told The National.
“There were 63 of them. Never in my career of nearly 35 years have I seen such a case … it is one of the rare medical cases.”
Doctor Khurana said the man broke the head off the spoons and swallowed only the handles.
The patient is being kept in the intensive care unit to recuperate.
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