Boy, seven, eats a four inch pencil whole, miraculously suffers no harm and then passes it painlessly in what doctors believe is a ‘curious’ case

A boy who accidentally swallowed a 10cm pencil, miraculously passed it painlessly less than 24 hours later. 

Sharing details of the bizarre incident in a medical journal, doctors told how the 7-year-old suffered no ill side effects.

The unidentified boy from Nepal, waited 4 hours before seeking medical attention.

But it is unclear why he ingested the pencil in the first place or if he had ever done it before. 

Medics, from Kathmandu Medical College and Teaching Hospital, said they believe the case is the first of its kind.  

X-ray scans of the boy’s chest and abdomen revealed the pencil was lodged in his stomach. 

But doctors noted his bladder habits were ‘normal’ and he was ‘active and playful’ throughout the ordeal. 

The boy was kept under observation for eight hours, advised to drink plenty of fluids and allowed only to eat a banana. 

A second scan then showed the pencil was near his ileocecal junction, a muscle valve that separates the small intestine and the large intestine. 

He was scheduled to have another x-ray eight hours later but while waiting, his mother suddenly revealed the boy had passed the pencil ‘as a single long piece’. 

Medics confirmed this was the case and a third scan found no traces of the object in his gastrointestinal tract. 

The boy was discharged the following day and required no follow-up appointment.  

The boy was kept under observation for eight hours, advised to drink plenty of fluids and allowed only to eat a banana. A second scan then showed the pencil was near his ileocecal junction, a muscle valve that separates the small intestine and the large intestine

Writing in the journal, Radiology Case Reports, medics said ingesting ‘foreign bodies’ was common among kids aged six months to six-years-old. 

Around 80 to 90 per cent of cases of ‘gastrointestinal foreign bodies’ pass involuntarily with no interventions required. 

However, it can be ‘very difficult’ for a long and sharp foreign body to pass naturally because of four major narrowings in the abdomen, they added. 

A toothbrush for instance, ‘has never been reported to come out of the gastrointestinal tract spontaneously and only once it did reach the colon with multiple injuries’, they said. 

Wooden foreign bodies often cannot also be identified with an x-ray because of its radiolucency.

But in this case, scans were able to pick up the inner graphite coating of the pencil.