Talk about a hole in one.
Doctors in Australia recently struggled to remove a foreign object trapped in a 14-year-old boy’s intestine after he put it in his anus, according to a report published last month in a medical journal.
While X-rays seem to show the teen experimented with a round, white egg, it was actually a golf ball that was pictured making its way to his sigmoid colon, the last section of the large intestine that connects to the rectum.
The boy, whose name was not disclosed, reportedly panicked when he couldn’t dispose of the golf ball by defecating, so he told his mother, who rushed him to Royal Adelaide Hospital. He did not complain of any discomfort, according to Case Reports in Surgery.
Doctors tried to remove the golf ball with various devices â a suction cup, medical net, looped snare, quad-prong grasper, retrieval pouch and balloon catheter.
They reported stopping with the “aggressive” interventions after more than two hours, hoping the golf ball would “spontaneously enter the rectum.” However, an X-ray showed it was still there even 24 hours later.
The boy’s family was reportedly not keen on doctors performing more physical removal attempts, so the medical specialists administered one liter of laxatives. Three hours later, doctors noted a “successful evacuation” of the golf ball and observed “no evidence of bowel injury.”
They did, however, advise the boy “against inserting further objects into his rectum in the future.”
Doctors recommended future patients with foreign bodies inside them (where there is no obstruction of bowel function) should be given laxatives in the hopes the object will pass without surgical intervention.
“A golf ball presents unique technical challenges when attempting to remove from the colon due to its mechanical properties,” the report authors wrote. “These include its large size, spherical shape, incompressibility, and the presence of dimples, which prevents a suction seal.”
In Canada, meanwhile, a woman recently claimed she shocked doctors when her car key pierced her cheek in a âfreak accident.â