RIYADH – Saudi hospitals have reported several incidents of extracting foreign objects such as hair, nails, scalpels, spoons, plastic balls and metal parts from the bowels of patients who visit emergency rooms with life-threatening conditions, Al-Hayat newspaper reported.
The paper said there were also cases of tools left behind by doctors during surgery.
Solid objects that remain in patients› stomachs for long periods pose a threat to their lives.
A few days ago, a medical team in Yanbu General Hospital removed a mass of hair that is 40 centimeters long from the stomach of a 14-year-old girl in a surgery that lasted 90 minutes after she complained of severe abdominal pain.
Another child, who was barely 16 months old, swallowed nails, causing an obstruction to his airway and impairing his upper respiratory organs. The nails damaged the boy›s epiglottis causing severe secretions from the mouth and nose. He was subjected to emergency endoscopic surgery at Buraidah Central Hospital.
A couple of years ago, a 24-year-old Indian resident was admitted to emergency room after a nail that bounced from a device pierced his heart. The medical team at the Prince Sultan Center for Cardiac Surgery in Qassim was able to save his life.
A medical team in late 2015 removed more than 400 gallstones from an elderly patient who was suffering abdominal pain and symptoms of blood poisoning. He underwent arthroscopic surgery to remove blockage of the bile duct.
A woman swallowed a spoon that almost caused her death by suffocation. But a medical team in Rass General Hospital saved her life even though her airway was almost completely blocked.
In 2014, an 8-month-old baby swallowed a small plastic ball that got stuck in his throat. The boy was unable to breathe and his heart stopped pumping. The boy›s entire body turned blue as a result of a lack of oxygen in blood. The child was transferred to the Children›s Hospital in Buraidah. A medical team at the Children›s Hospital in Makkah removed a coin from the esophagus of a 3-year-old child using an endoscope.
If some of the patients had ingested foreign objects, others were victims of medical errors. King Khaled Hospital in Hail has opened an extensive investigation into a resident doctor who was accused of forgetting surgical scissors inside the abdomen of a patient during surgery.
“The scissors left behind during a previous surgery were removed by another surgical procedure,” a source said to Al-Hayat.
