ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2009) — Foreign body ingestion is a frequent gastrointestinal emergency. However, long spoon swallowing is a rare event. Most swallowed spoons have been found in the stomach. Previously, there has been no reported case of a long spoon reaching the jejunum.

A research article to be published on October 21, 2009 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology reports a case of accidentally swallowing of a long spoon. A 33-year-old woman complained that she attempted to use the spoon to remove a fish bone, which was lodge in the pharynx 20 h before.

She had no abdominal pain, fever, vomiting, dysphagia, voice change, cough, or difficulty breathing. An urgent plain abdominal radiograph revealed a metallic foreign body in the lower mid-abdomen. Several times of attempt to remove the spoon were failed because the patient could not resist the nausea when the spoon was pulled to the cardia.

She had to be taken to operating room for an exploratory laparotomy which disclosed that a 15 cm spoon was passed into the jejunum following about 200 cm of the ligament of Treitz. After the operation, the patient was well and was discharged home on postoperative day 7.

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by World Journal of Gastroenterology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:

1. Song et al. Travel of a mis-swallowed long spoon to the jejunum. World Journal of Gastroenterology, 2009; 15 (39): 4984 DOI: 10.3748/wjg.15.4984

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Foreign body ingestion is a frequent gastrointestinal emergency. However, long spoon swallowing is a rare event. Most swallowed spoons have been found in the stomach. Previously, there has been no reported case of a long spoon reaching the jejunum. (Credit: iStockphoto/Olena Druzhynina)

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