Doctors find toothpick inside man’s rectum after he accidentally swallowed it two months earlier
- The 67-year-old man in Japan spoke to doctors after suffering months of pain
- After an initial scan, they diagnosed him with stenosis, requiring surgery
- But right before the operation a CT scan found a three-inch-long toothpick
- Six days later, doctors performed surgery on the man, relieving him of the pain
Doctors in Japan found a wooden toothpick inside a man’s rectum after he accidentally swallowed it two months earlier, causing weeks of pain.
The unusual medical case was reported in this week’s British Medical Journal (BMJ), which detailed how the 67-year-old man reached out to doctors after suffering from two months of pain in his right buttock and thigh.
MRI scans taken initially suggested that the source of the man’s pain was stenosis around his lower back – a condition where the spaces within the spine begin to narrow, which can pinch the surrounding nerves causing back pain.
While a more conservative treatment of drugs and physical therapy can be used to treat stenosis, the doctors in Japan decided surgery was the best course of action.
However, they were met with a surprise when a CT scan undertaken shortly before the surgery was due to begin revealed a three-inch-long wooden rod lodged in the man’s rectum.
Eventually, this was determined the offending object was a toothpick the man had accidentally swallowed.
Doctors in Japan found a wooden toothpick inside a man’s rectum after he accidentally swallowed it two months earlier, causing him months of pain. Pictured: File photo of a person using a wooden toothpick like the one found
‘MRI depicted right L5/S1 lateral recess stenosis requiring surgical treatment,’ an abstract of the case in the BMJ read.
‘However, preoperative CT showed an approximately 7 cm long, thin, rod-shaped structure in the rectum, which was ultimately determined to be an accidentally ingested toothpick,’ it said.
With the pain in the man’s leg quickly getting worse, doctors resolved to remove the toothpick from its unfortunately hiding place as soon as possible.
Six days after the discovery, the man underwent surgery to have the foreign object removed, with the man’s pain disappearing.
‘The pain disappeared thereafter, and the symptoms have not recurred since,’ it was reported in the journal abstract, confirming it was indeed the toothpick that had been causing the man’s pain.
When a foreign object in a person’s rectum causes pain or discomfort, more often than not it is because it was put there intentionally – for a variety of possible reasons.
However, in some cases discomfort can be caused by harder objects a person has ingested, such as animal bones, according to Gizmodo.
In this unusual case, doctors theorised that sharp end of the toothpick got stuck against a particular bunch of nerves in the spinal cord, exerting enough pressure to account for the pain in the man’s right buttock and leg and leading to doctors to believe it was a case of stenosis.
‘The pain might have been localised to the right buttock and posterior thigh in the early stages because the fine tip of the toothpick was positioned to the right of the anterior ramus of the S2 spinal nerve,’ the report said.
The BMJ case study warned that while ‘sacral plexus disorder caused by a rectal foreign body is extremely rare,’ doctors should be ‘mindful to avoid misdiagnosis’.