Chicken bone fragment traveled for a month in baby girl's intestine
A 12-year-old girl in Hanoi had a stomachache and high fever due to a piece of chicken bone she swallowed a month earlier that punctured her intestines.
Dr. Nguyen Thi Hong Van, Department of Pediatric Surgery, said that initially, doctors suspected that the patient had an infection in the abdominal cavity. However, the abdominal ultrasound only showed thickening of some small intestinal loops, and the lower abdominal X-ray did not detect any abnormalities. A CT scan of the abdomen discovered a foreign object about 3 cm long that had punctured the intestinal wall and caused localized peritonitis in the abdomen. The patient underwent laparoscopic surgery immediately afterwards.
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| A piece of chicken bone punctured the child's colon. Photo: Provided by the hospital. |
In this case, usually if the hole is not closed by the small intestine loop, feces will spill into the abdominal cavity, causing infection, severe poisoning, and even death.
The patient was operated on by a laparoscopic surgical team to remove the foreign object, suture the perforated sigmoid colon, clean the abdominal cavity, place an abdominal drain for monitoring, and remove the small intestine loop to drain the ileum.
"Within the next 2 months, the patient will need another surgery to close the ileostomy," said Dr. Quyet.
After waking up from surgery, the patient said he may have swallowed a piece of chicken bone during a class party a month earlier. The patient is now fever-free, alert, and no longer has a stomachache. With his health improving, he is expected to be discharged in the next few days.
