Doctors at Sanjay Gandhi Hospital in Madhya Pradesh, India, were stunned when X-rays of a patient who had suffered severe stomach pain showed that he had more than two hundred coins, a hundred nails and other metal objects inside. . In total, the doctors had to remove about seven kilos of metal from his body.
The man had gone to the medical center after feeling abdominal pain, although he believed it was due to food poisoning. The doctors who treated him are convinced that he suffers from some kind of behavioral disorder.
Almost certainly one known as pica, which consists of ingesting all kinds of objects.
This disorder takes its name from the magpies, birds whose scientific name is Pica pica. And, when the ingested objects accumulate in the organism, what doctors call bezoar is formed, which is the name given to a conglomerate of undigested foreign bodies found in the digestive tract.
The most common bezoars that can be found inside a person are of four types: phytobezoar (formed by vegetable fibers), trichobezoar (by hairs), pharmacobezoar (medicines) and lactobezoar (dairy products and derivatives).
But, although they are not as common as the previous ones, there are also cases of patients who ingest plastic and metal objects, such as the case in question.
