Doctors were left baffled after removing more of £53k worth of jewellery and coins from the stomach of an Indian woman.
Runi Khatun, 26, was ‘weak and emaciated’ when she was rushed to hospital on July 16 in West Bengal state after she began throwing up after every meal.
During surgery, doctors removed 69 chains, 80 earrings, 46 coins, eight lockets, 11 nose rings, four keys, five anklets and one watch dial from her abdomen.
Doctors said while the objects were mostly made of copper and brass, there were also some expensive gold jewellery found inside her stomach
Doctors were left baffled after removing more than three pounds of jewellery and coins worth around £53k from the stomach of an Indian woman
The woman’s mother said she noticed ornaments had started disappearing from their home but she had no idea that her daughter was swallowing them.
She said her daughter got the coins from her brother’s shop and added that when she would question her about the missing objects she would cry.
Doctors said while the objects were mostly made of copper and brass, there were also some expensive gold jewellery found inside her stomach.
Dr. Siddhartha Biswas, head of the surgery department at the Rampurhat Government Medical College and Hospital, said the patient was ’emancipated’ and could not eat food.
He said: ‘The patient looked weak and emaciated at the time when she was admitted to the hospital,’ he said.
‘Her albumin and haemoglobin count were so low that we could not perform an operation soon.
‘Her condition was so critical that she required at least five bottles of blood. She could not even intake food physically so we had to administer Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) to artificially inject food through her mouth.’
The patient was slowly stabilised and within a week’s time the doctors decided to operate on her.
During surgery, doctors removed 69 chains, 80 earrings, 46 coins, eight lockets, 11 nose rings, four keys, five anklets and one watch dial from her abdomen
‘If we had operated on her earlier, she wouldn’t have survived,’ stated Dr. Biswas.
The operation lasted for nearly an hour and fifteen minutes and the doctors successfully removed the large chunk of metals and jewellery from her stomach.
Dr. Biswas said that her condition is stable now.
There has been a sharp increase in medical cases where patients have been reported to swallow solid objects for reasons unknown.
Earlier this month, doctors at a government hospital in Madhya Pradesh state’s Chhattarpur district removed 30 objects from a man’s stomach, including razor blades and screwdrivers, after he complained of having severe abdomen pain.
The 30-year-old man, identified as Yogesh Thakur, was admitted to hospital on July 14. After his mother, Kusma Thakur, told doctors that he would grab anything and eat it, they immediately performed an X-Ray which revealed shocking results.
Doctors were stunned to find objects like a knife, a screwdriver and plastic inside his stomach.
In a similar incident, a man in Rajasthan state, swallowed 116 nails and had to undergo an operation in May.
In another incident, surgeons removed around three pounds of metal, including nuts, bolts and jewellery from a woman’s stomach in the western Indian state of Gujarat last year.
The weird and rare disorder where people eat sharp metal objects and other indigestible items are referred to as Acuphagia.
It is a category of the Pica condition, a psychological disorder characterized by an appetite for substances that are largely non-nutritive, such as ice, hair, paper, drywall or paint, sharp objects, metal, stones, soil, glass, faeces and chalk.