Doctors Remove 30cm-Long Live Eel From Vietnamese Man's Abdomen

Doctors at the Hai Ha district medical centre in Vietnam's northern Quang Ninh Province were in shock when they found an unusual object stuck inside the body of a patient.

The unidentified 34-year-old patient went to the hospital with complaints of severe abdominal cramps on March 20.

FREEPIK

Foreign object causing discomfort

Doctors performed an ultrasound and X-ray, which showed a foreign object was inside the man¡¯s digestive tract.

Scans revealed that the patient was also suffering from a life-threatening condition called peritonitis, where the abdominal lining becomes inflamed due to the presence of the foreign object.

Due to this, the doctors rushed to perform an emergency surgery on him to remove the foreign object. The procedure was complicated as the doctors also had to minimise the damage it could cause to the man¡¯s intestines.

Doctors find live eel

Upon opening up the patient¡¯s abdomen, doctors were in for a surprise as the foreign object turned out to be a 30 cm eel, which was still alive.

ODDITY CENTRAL

After successfully pulling out the eel, the doctors also removed the necrotic colorectal segment of the intestines, a delicate procedure with a high potential for infection due to the proximity to the rectal area.

How did the eel get inside his body

What makes the case even more puzzling is that the patient and the doctors are clueless about how and when the eel ended up in his abdomen.

UNSPLASH

Doctors believe that the eel could have crawled from the anus to the patient¡¯s colon, bit through the intestine, and entered the abdomen.

¡°This is a rare case. The rectal area has a lot of fecal fluid and is easily infected with bacteria, but it was performed safely so the surgery did not have any problems,¡± Pham Manh Hung, the Head of Surgery, told local media.

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