While ingestion of foreign bodies is far more common in children, adults have their share of incidents. Take this case of a 40-year-old man who, after questioning by clinicians, revealed what he'd swallowed while drinking with friends decades earlier.
The man met with a gastroenterology team after experiencing 2 years of persistent, intermittent abdominal pain. An abdominal exam found no tenderness nor any palpable mass, and his lab test results were normal, reported Jiahuang Huang of the First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University in China, and colleagues.
After targeted questioning, the patient disclosed that he accidentally swallowed a plastic toothbrush after a period of heavy drinking 20 years earlier, following a bet he'd made with friends, they noted in the American Journal of Case Reports.
The patient said he had no psychiatric history but acknowledged that he was a heavy drinker with "impaired behavioral control when intoxicated."
"Small blunt foreign bodies often pass spontaneously, but long rigid objects (>6 cm) rarely traverse the pylorus or duodenal sweep, requiring intervention to prevent pressure necrosis, perforation, or fistula formation," Huang and team wrote.
