Doctors in Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad removed 29 steel spoons, 19 toothbrushes and two pens from a man's stomach after he pushed them down his throat in anger at a rehabilitation centre.
The patient, identified as 35-year-old Sachin, a resident of Hapur, was sent to the de-addiction centre in the district by his family, NDTV reported.
Sachin reportedly said that his anger was fueled by the small portion of food being fed to the patients at the rehab. "In the entire day, we would be given very less vegetables and just a few chapatis. If something came from home, most wouldn't reach us. We would sometimes get one biscuit in a day," he stated.
Infuriated by the food, the man would steal steel spoons from a pile of utensils, take them to the bathroom, break them into pieces and push them down his throat, sometimes even with the help of water.
Doctors at the Devanandani Hospital said that Sachin was rushed to the hospital with severe abdominal pain. After an ultrasound, the doctors noticed unusual objects lodged in his stomach.
The X-rays and CT scans showed that there was a shocking amount of spoons, toothbrushes and pens present in his stomach.
{{/usCountry}}The X-rays and CT scans showed that there was a shocking amount of spoons, toothbrushes and pens present in his stomach.
{{/usCountry}}The doctors initially attempted to remove the objects through an endoscopy procedure, but given the amount present, it failed. The material had to be removed via surgery.
Dr Shyam Kumar, a doctor at the hospital where Sachin was treated, was quoted as saying, "Such problems often occur in people with psychological problems."
Similar cases from the past
In a similar case from 2022, 63 spoons were recovered from the stomach of a patient in UP's Muzaffarnagar. The man, Vijay, who was reportedly a drug addict, had been admitted to a de-addiction centre, where he had been eating spoons for a year.
Doctors told news agency ANI at the time that the patient had agreed to have eaten the spoons. However, his family alleged that the staff at the rehab had force-fed him the spoons.
Back in 2019, a team of doctors in Himachal Pradesh's Mandi recovered spoons, screwdrivers, toothbrushes, a kitchen knife and a door latch from the stomach of a man suffering from a major mental disorder, HT had reported.
After the 35-year-old man, Karan Sen, complained of acute abdominal pain, he was admitted to Lal Bhadur Shastri Government Medical College in Mandi district’s Ner Chowk.
Sen had been suffering from schizophrenia for two decades. Initially, he complained of a cyst protrusion in his stomach, following which, he was admitted to a local hospital.
Doctors found a screwdriver in his stomach after making an incision and then referred him to the Lal Bahar Shastri College in Mandi. Sen's scans revealed that several foreign items were present in his stomach.
Following a nearly four-hour-long surgery, doctors removed the objects from his stomach.
Dr Rajneesh Pathania, principal of the medical college, had said at the time that doctors removed eight spoons, two screwdrivers, two toothbrushes, a kitchen knife and a door latch from the man's stomach.