Coin out of stomach in 2 mins flat

Coin out of stomach in 2 mins flat

Two minutes is all it took to relieve Sindhu Sasane of her “unbearable” pain. The 30-year-old resident of Jalana district had a Rs5 coin lodged in her stomach for five months before doctors at the Fortis Hospital in Mulund took it out through an endoscopy recently. Sasane had swallowed the coin at a wedding feast in May. “She was eating rice that had the coin mixed in it. By the time she could figure out that something was wrong, she had swallowed the coin,” says Dr Purushottam Vashistha, consulting gastroenterologist at Fortis Hospital. Sasane rushed to a doctor nearby. When an X-ray report showed that the coin posed no obstruction to the foodpipe, the doctor suggested that she eat bananas to facilitate a natural passage of the coin out of her body. She followed the doctor’s order to a tee for the next three months at the end of which she thought she had got rid of the coin, says Dr Vashistha. But she suffered from recurring stomachaches and discomfort in the abdominal region. Two weeks ago, when the pain became unbearable, she went to a local doctor, who referred her to the Fortis Hospital. A CT scan at hospital showed that the coin was lodged in the upper part of the intestine. “Luckily, it didn’t cause any obstruction. We took her for an endoscopy and within two minutes, the coin was out of her system,” says Dr Vashistha. He explains that lightweight coins pass through the body easily, but heavier ones, like a Rs5 coin, are not that easy to get out of the system. “Usually, we get cases of children swallowing coins. This is the first time I saw a 30-year-old woman complaining of such a problem.”