Doctors Found 639 Iron Nails in A Mentally Ill Man’s Stomach

In a rare case, doctors at Calcutta Medical College (CMC) and Hospital removed 639 nails from the stomach of a 40-year-old patient who has been suffering from mental disabilities. According to the family members of the patient was admitted to the hospital about a week ago with acute stomach pain. He had stopped taking food since mid-October. A USG test on the patient found that a lot of nails were piled in his stomach.

"The 48-year-old Gobargdanga resident is schizophrenic and used to gulp nails regularly. He had a complaint of pain in the stomach and used to vomit regularly. He was brought to the hospital two weeks ago. We spotted several nails in his intestine after an endoscopy. The nails had displaced the intestine," said Dr Siddhartha Biswas, associate professor of surgery who conducted the surgery.

The patient was admitted on Friday and as he had a plasma and-albumin imbalance, the operation got delayed. Biswas's team used a magnet to pull the nails out. "The nails are mostly bigger than 2 inches and are qui te sharp. But luckily , there was no major perforation in the GI tract," Dr Biswas said. The patient is stable and is under observation.

“The operation was risky as his stomach had become abnormally big and was completely filled with nails. But luckily it did not pierce the stomach,” the doctor said.

“He is mentally disbalanced and has a habit of swallowing strange things. But we never imagined that there would be so many nails in his stomach,” a relative of the patient said.

Source-Medindia