Operation Goldfinger only made woman’s pain worse

This incredible X-ray shows a Korean woman’s hands glittering – because of the gold placed in her wrists and fingers.

The unnamed 58-year-old, who was a fan of alternative therapies, suffered from arthritis and was desperate to tackle her agonising condition.

She was eventually persuaded to try gold-thread acupuncture – a form of pain relief therapy that has no scientific evidence of working.

However, doctors who stumbled upon her glowing fingers believe the treatment may have made the patient’s distress even worse.  

The bizarre X-ray, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, was taken by rheumatologists at St Vincent’s Hospital in Suwon in 2014. 

Writing in the prestigious journal, they revealed that the woman was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when she was 48. It led to deformities of her hands and feet. 

But she suffered from debilitating pain in her hands and feet when she was just 18 – and became reliant on painkillers to ease her discomfort.

The woman also attempted to combat her symptoms using gold-thread acupuncture – a traditional East Asian practice.

Gold-thread acupuncture is similar to the traditional practice – which involves thin needles being inserted into the body.

However, according to LiveScience, this form of the ancient treatment sees gold thread inserted into the skin and left in the body.

The experts, led by Dr Kyung-Su Park, said it was unlikely that the bizarre treatment worsened her condition directly.

However, they revealed that it was probably because she avoided conventional help that her condition worsened to the extent it did. 

Writing in the journal, Dr Park said she ‘depended on acupuncture instead of getting proper medical treatment with anti-rheumatic drugs’.

Surgeons conducted an operation on her feet to reduce the joint pain, and doctors prescribed her several different drugs.

The gold-threads were left in the same place, and the woman is ‘doing well these days’, according to the case report.