An Irish convict got out of prison for the week after he was rushed to the emergency room for swallowing a cell phone. X-rays showed the phone lodged in the 29-year-old man’s stomach.
Doctors were initially on standby hoping the phone would make its way through the man’s digestive track, but after 18 hours of no movement a medical team had to surgically remove the device through an incision.
CBS News reported Thursday:
The medical team tried to remove the phone by pulling it up through his esophagus, so that the man wouldn't need surgery. This procedure, called a gastrointestinal endoscopy, is a common technique for removing foreign objects that have been swallowed and don't pass through the digestive system. It involves using a flexible tube with a camera to see inside the stomach. But although the doctors tried to take the phone out using several medical tools, including forceps and snare-like devices, they couldn't align the phone correctly to get it out of the stomach without potentially damaging the esophagus, the report said.
The doctors said the case was the first of its kind given that the phone made it all the way to the man’s stomach. He was released from the hospital a week later.
"An ingested mobile phone in the stomach may not be amenable for safe removal using the current endoscopic retrieval devices," the doctors wrote about the case in their report.
Doctors checked up on the man four months after the incident and reported that he showed no symptoms from the incident.