Doctors in India remove 40 knives from man’s stomach

“In my 20-year career, and in all the medical literature that we checked, there has never been a case like this one, where a person has swallowed not one, but 40 knives,” said Malhotra, a critical care doctor at the Corporate Hospital in the city of Amritsar.

The man told doctors that he could not explain his urge to swallow knives. “He told us he would swallow the knives along with a glass of water,” Malhotra said. “He had no explanation for why he did it. Just an urge.”

The man, who has not been identified, had come to the hospital two weeks ago complaining of severe pain in his abdomen.

“In an endoscopy, we saw a big mass in his abdominal area,” Malhotra said by phone. “We initially thought it was a tumour or some cancerous growth. But it was like nothing we doctors had seen before.”

A team of two surgeons, two critical care physicians and an anesthetist conducted the surgery, during which they initially removed 28 knives. But further investigation revealed 12 more, the hospital said.

There was massive internal bleeding during the surgery because the knives, which were all made of iron, had lacerated the man’s stomach walls, Malhotra said.

Since the surgery, the man has told doctors that he can’t bear to look at another knife. “He even asked his wife to get out of the room when she was cutting some fruit for him,” Malhotra said.

Nirmala George, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Doctors in India remove 40 knives from man’s stomach

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