A professional athlete who has swallowed a toothpick is left with a perforated colon

An An 18-year-old professional athlete nearly died after swallowing a toothpick, which took his doctor three weeks and four hospitals to diagnose. The appalling case study may seem too long for the doctors, but as the doctors of the Mbadachusetts General Hospital young man say New England Journal of MedicineWood toothpicks are remarkably hard to detect.

The young man, whose identity was kept confidential, was one of the lucky ones. Since wooden toothpicks are also difficult to digest, 10% of cases in which a patient swallows a toothpick become fatal.

Abdominal pain and athlete fever began 20 days before admission to Mbadachusetts General Hospital during a sports training trip. He had first gone to a local hospital in the southeastern United States, but the doctors who worked there took a CT scan, kept it for five hours for observation. and sent him without diagnosis. Her case did not seem serious yet, despite diarrhea and nausea, as well as pain and fever. For a moment, things seemed to improve.

"Over the next two weeks, abdominal pain decreased and fevers and loose stools disappeared. mild nausea persisted, "write the authors of the case study. "The patient traveled with his team in the western United States and participated in reduced intensity athletic training."

But then, four days before his arrival at the Mbadachusetts General, his abdominal pain returned, this time accompanied by lower back pain. When he developed a fever of 103 degrees, he also went to a second hospital. Doctors knew something was wrong, but did not know what. They encouraged her to return to New England to seek more complex care.

Then, one day before he finally had surgery, he saw an outpatient physician at Mbadachusetts General, whom he talked about fever, bloody stools, and abdominal and back pain. Things were getting worse. They scheduled a colonoscopy the next day to get to the bottom of things.

Finally, a CT scan revealed fresh blood in the colon but did not offer doctors any clues about what could be causing the bleeding. When the doctors finally did a colonoscopy, they were stunned to see a toothpick. As suggested by the literature, this does not appear in any of the CT scans. The patient was taken for emergency surgery during which doctors used nine haemostatic forceps to stop the bleeding that began as soon as it was removed.