Sanchita Chatterjee, BS News Agency: The severe stomach pain did not subside. He went to the hospital, and what the doctor said after the examination shocked the Chinese young man and his family. It is reported that the young man is carrying a mercury-filled thermometer that he swallowed as a child 20 years ago.Wang (pseudonym), a resident of Wenzhou City in southeast China's Zhejiang Province, went to the Longgang Branch of the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University for treatment. A scan at the hospital found an abnormal object in his duodenum, or the first part of the small intestine. Doctors initially thought it was a mercury-filled thermometer.
Doctors said that the head of the thermometer was pressing directly on the intestinal wall. This risked perforation of the intestine and serious internal bleeding.
Wang told doctors that he accidentally swallowed the thermometer when he was 12 years old. However, he was afraid and did not tell his parents about it. At that time, his parents were also busy with work. The young man gradually forgot about the incident as he had no other symptoms.
Doctors were able to remove the thermometer in just 20 minutes through surgery. However, doctors said that the surgery was very complicated and delicate. This is because the thermometer had been in the body for a long time and was located near the bile duct, which posed a great risk of damaging the intestinal wall.
Although the thermometer recovered after the surgery was intact, its size marks had largely been erased.
Experts from the hospital's endoscopy department warned that if someone swallows a foreign object, they should immediately stop eating and drinking, reduce talking, and seek medical attention quickly.
According to the Wenzhou Daily Newspaper Group, more than one million people in China seek medical treatment every year after accidentally swallowing foreign objects. More than 60 percent of them are children and a significant proportion are elderly people. The most commonly swallowed objects include fish bones, chicken bones, batteries, magnets, and artificial teeth.
In a similar incident in June last year, 64-year-old Yang (pseudonym) from central China's Anhui Province went to the hospital with chest discomfort and discovered that he had a toothbrush stuck in his body for 52 years.
Yang said he also accidentally swallowed the toothbrush when he was 12. But he hid it for fear of being scolded and mistakenly thought it would dissolve on its own. He had been experiencing mild stomach pain for years but had not paid any attention to it.
Meanwhile, Wang's incident caused a stir after it went viral on social media. One commenter said he was very lucky. The thermometer didn't break and the mercury didn't spread throughout his body, which is a great relief.