The elderly woman swallowed a piece of seashell while eating seafood porridge.

On July 3rd, news from Gia Dinh People's Hospital indicated that the hospital has recently been receiving a large number of elderly patients who have swallowed foreign objects in their food, causing serious damage to their digestive tract. Among them was an elderly patient who swallowed a large piece of seashell.

Specifically, the case involves Mrs. NTN (86 years old, residing in Binh Thanh District). Previously, the elderly woman ate seafood porridge, and because she no longer had teeth, she could only swallow the food without realizing that she had swallowed the shells as well.

Two days later, on June 28th, the elderly woman experienced lower abdominal pain, suspected to be due to a digestive disorder, so her family took her to Gia Dinh People's Hospital. An ultrasound revealed she had enteritis (inflammation of the intestines). A CT scan of the abdomen to investigate the cause of the inflammation discovered a foreign object piercing through her small intestine.

The seashell fragment was removed from the elderly woman's intestines.

Although the elderly woman had many underlying medical conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, and ischemic heart disease, the emergency situation meant the surgery could not be delayed. If the foreign object were allowed to move down and perforate the large intestine, feces would spill into the abdominal cavity, causing peritonitis and increasing the risk of death.

The elderly woman was transferred to the operating room, where doctors from the Gastrointestinal Surgery department performed an endoscopy to locate the foreign object and made a small incision to remove it. The removed foreign object was two pieces of seashell, each measuring up to 5 cm. After the surgery, the woman's health is stable, and she is being closely monitored at the hospital.

Subsequently, on June 30th, the Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery at Gia Dinh People's Hospital performed surgery on a 60-year-old woman residing in Ho Chi Minh City who had swallowed a fish bone while eating. This bone fragment traveled through the digestive tract to the abdominal wall and formed an abscess.

Similarly, a 60-year-old male patient from Ho Chi Minh City arrived at Gia Dinh People's Hospital complaining of pain in his left buttock and lower left abdomen. His condition deteriorated, with a rapid pulse, low blood pressure, and septic shock. During a rectal examination, doctors removed a 3 cm long fish bone from his rectum. According to the doctors, if he had arrived at the hospital even a little later, the risk of death would have been much higher.

Besides fish bones and shells, Gia Dinh People's Hospital also performs emergency surgeries on elderly patients with gastrointestinal injuries caused by duck bones, tea leaves, and medicine blisters. In one case, an elderly man had a bamboo toothpick pierced through his stomach and into his liver.

Dr. Mai Phan Tuong Anh, Head of the General Planning Department and Deputy Head of the Gastrointestinal Surgery Department at Gia Dinh People's Hospital, stated that it takes approximately four days for food to pass through the digestive tract from ingestion to completion. From the moment of swallowing, food remains in the stomach for about four hours. The most common sites for foreign bodies to perforate or become lodged are the passage from the stomach to the small intestine and from the small intestine to the large intestine. If the patient arrives at the hospital early, the foreign body can be removed via endoscopy. In later cases, X-rays will be taken every six hours to check the location of the foreign body, monitor its position, and wait for it to pass naturally. However, if during monitoring the foreign body causes damage, perforation, or abscesses in the digestive tract, surgery is mandatory.

To avoid swallowing foreign objects such as seashells and fish bones, Dr. Tuong Anh advises everyone to eat, for example, fish that has been deboned and filleted. When eating fruit with seeds, it's best to cut it horizontally, not vertically, because when cut vertically, the seeds lie parallel to the fruit segments and are harder to detect than when cut horizontally. If there are elderly people or young children in the house, in addition to carefully selecting food, avoid cutting medicine blister packs into small pieces to prevent accidentally swallowing the pill packaging.

Source link: https://thanhnien.vn/cu-ba-nuot-manh-vo-so-khi-an-chao-hai-san-185230703162722186.htm