Shock as doctors remove pile of stones, coins from man's stomach

[Photo: Courtesy]

Doctors were shocked after removing a pile of stones, bottle caps and coins from man's stomach after he ate them to cure his anxiety.

The 54-year-old man was admitted to the hospital suffering from severe stomach pains and bloating.

Concerned doctors ran a number of tests to see what might be the cause of the Korean patient's painful symptoms.

They noticed that they could feel 'something resembling small stones' when they touched his abdomen.

Scans then revealed a huge build-up of objects 'occupying the whole stomach' of the patient.

But the medics were left completely dumbfounded when they found a lump containing dozens of foreign objects.

A collection of stones, bottle caps and coins weighing 4.4lbs (2kg) were pulled out of his stomach.

They weighed 2kgs [Photo: Courtesy]

This 'extremely unusual' case was published by Dr Pyong Wha Choi in the American Journal of Medical Case Reports .

The patient, was thought to have swallowed the items over long periods of time as a way of dealing with anxiety.

When he was questioned the man confessed he often ingested coins and pebbles whenever he felt anxious - even though he took drugs to keep calm.

The man, believed to be from Goyang - north of the capital Seoul and close to the North Korea border - was born with an intellectual disability.

At first surgeons tried to remove the objects using a gastroscopy - where a thin tube is inserted into the stomach through the mouth.

But it failed due to the sheer amount of objects that were present.

It is not clear how many the man had swallowed, Dr Choi wrote in the scientific publication.

The next day, surgeons extracted the foreign bodies one-by-one through a different surgical procedure.

Dr Choi wrote: "Surgery was inevitable as there were too many foreign bodies to extract using endoscopy."

X-rays [Photo: Courtesy]

The man was discharged from Inje University Ilsan Paik Hospital and sent home after a nine-day stay.

It is not known how long the items had been inside him as doctors only said he had a habit 'in the past'.

Dr Choi said ingestion of foreign bodies is more common in children as they accidentally swallow items.

Meanwhile, in healthy adults, objects most often swallowed include fish and chicken bones.

Dr Choi wrote: "Once the foreign bodies pass through the oesophagus, symptoms associated with the foreign body is rare.

"In the present case, even though the patient did not complain of vomiting, the large number of pebbles and coins in his stomach caused him abdominal pain."