In a bizarre incident, the intestines of a 63-year-old man fell out of his body after he sneezed and coughed at the same time. Reportedly, the man, a resident of Florida, was having breakfast with his wife at a restaurant when the incident took place.
According to a report by The New York Post, the man had undergone abdominal surgery after battling prostate cancer. Hours before his intestine came out of body, he had sutures taken out of his abdomen.
The shocking case was published in the American Journal of Medical Case Reports journal highlighted the details of this episode.
“During breakfast, the man sneezed forcefully, followed by coughing. He immediately noticed a ‘wet’ sensation and pain in his lower abdomen. Looking down, he observed several loops of pink bowel protruding from his recent surgical site,” it stated.
After his intestines came out of his body, the man covered the organ with his shirt while his wife called for an ambulance. When the paramedics team arrived, they saw an “approximately 3-inch vertical laceration with large amounts of bowel” poking out of it. Fortunately, the man had not lost much blood, and he was taken quickly to a local hospital.
“In the Emergency Department, the Urology service was consulted immediately. Vital signs were within normal limits. Pre-operative blood tests were obtained and noted to be unchanged from recent comparisons. A nasogastric tube was inserted, and the patient consented to receive an exploratory laparotomy,” the paper added.
The surgeons carefully picked the bowel and put it inside the abdominal cavity, and also “inspected the full length of the small bowel and noted no evidence of injury.”
The surgeons closed the abdomen with a sequence of figure-of-eight stitches, which are among the strongest closures to stop it from opening up again. The 63-year-old was in the hospital for six days and put on a normal diet before discharge.
