Blade ‘wandered’ around in man’s body after he was stabbed and stitched up, doctors say
Emergency room doctors are rarely shocked by what type of injuries come through the department’s doors.
But in rare cases, even they can’t believe what they are seeing.
A 22-year-old man walked into the emergency room of a mid-level hospital in Nepal with complaints of mild abdominal pain that he had been feeling for about a day, according to a Sept. 2 case report published in Cureus.
His abdomen wasn’t tight, he didn’t experience any nausea, diarrhea, vomiting or constipation, and his blood levels looked normal, doctors said in the report.
He was alert, chatting with doctors and overall stable.
When doctors took a closer look at his body, they found a line of stitches on his right side, the opposite side from where he was reporting pain, according to the report.
The doctors asked him about the wound. It was only then he told them he had been in a drunken fight the day before — and was stabbed.
The man underwent various laboratory tests, and doctors took an X-ray, according to the report, but since the wound was stitched up well and his pain was relatively small, the doctors sent the man home.
Then the X-ray imaging came back.
Inside of the man’s abdomen, across the body from the stab wound, was a nearly half-foot-long blade.
“The retained knife blade is an unusual and spectacular injury. Retained stabbing instruments are seldom encountered in patients and have rarely been reported in the literature,” doctors said in the case report, titled The Wandering Blade.
Somehow over the course of 24 hours from when the man was stabbed to when he showed up in the emergency room, the roughly six-inch blade had “wandered” through his abdominal cavity from one side of his body to the other.
“The wondrous part was that the knife blade had traveled to the left iliac fossa without injuring any surrounding (internal organs),” the doctors said.
The doctors immediately called the man back to the hospital and started an emergency laparotomy, or surgery that opens the abdomen.
Once the man’s body was open, surgeons found the knife wrapped up in omentum, a tissue that hangs down from the stomach and connects it to the other abdominal organs.
Miraculously, the connective tissues, organs, major arteries and veins all remained untouched, the doctors said in the report.
There was a small incision on the top of his liver, but the doctors believe the injury occurred during the initial stabbing, and not from the knife spending a day floating around.
The blade was safely removed, and the man’s abdomen was closed again, this time without any foreign bodies still trapped inside.
Doctors said the man was expected to make a full recovery, but he did not return to the hospital for his follow-up appointments.
“In the evaluation of patients with abdominal stab wounds, attention should be given to the fate of the stabbing instruments, including retention inside the body,” the doctors said in the report. “Potentially dangerous instruments can be retained in the abdominal cavity without causing significant symptoms.”
1-year-old’s unborn twin found inside her brain. Here’s what neurologists did next
18-month-old girl kept having seizures. Doctors say her mom was causing them
Man with prostate cancer suddenly develops thick Irish accent. Doctors found the cause
Ancient woman had serious leg injury. Then she grew a ‘rope-like’ bone, experts say
