A 64-year-old Chinese man who felt a strange sensation in his stomach and went to the doctor was shocked to discover that a toothbrush had been stuck in his intestines for 52 years.
The man, surnamed Yang, from eastern China’s Anhui province, said he remembered swallowing it at the age of 12 and was too scared to tell his parents about it.
Yang said he thought the toothbrush would dissolve on its own and had not felt anything untoward until recently.
Hospital doctors checked his digestive system and found the toothbrush stuck in his small intestine.
They performed endoscopic surgery on him and took the rogue 17-cm dental implement out of his body in 80 minutes.
It was one of the longest items the hospital had taken out of a patient’s digestive system in the past three years.
A doctor surnamed Zhou said that under normal circumstances, a toothbrush in the intestines could rotate, press, and puncture the inner tissue. It could cause intestinal perforation and could be fatal.
Yang was fortunate that the brush was lodged in a crook of the intestine and had barely moved for decades.
Online observers expressed shock at the news.
“How lucky is he to survive with a toothbrush in his body for five decades? How could he think it would dissolve by itself? How did he manage to swallow that toothbrush?” one person said.
Another person said he understood why Yang did not dare to tell his family.
“Naughty things like this, especially from half a century ago, might really end up with the kid being beaten harshly by their parents,” the person said.
“It is a miracle that he did not even feel a thing for five decades,” said a third.
“When I was young, I thought I was going to die when I swallowed a watermelon seed,” added another online observer.
Last year, doctors in southwestern China’s Sichuan province helped a woman remove a tube of super glue that was 15cm long and 2.5cm wide.
She said she accidentally swallowed it and thought her body’s digestive system would deal with it naturally.
Doctors suggest that people do regular body checks to avoid similar problems.
