On the midnight of 19th March, doctors from Midnapore Medical College and Hospital successfully conducted an operation in a rare case where a man in his 30s reported to the emergency ward with a glass bottle lodged in his rectum.

The patient had come in initially claiming extreme abdominal pain and problems with bowel movements. He was also carrying an x-ray report from a private lab, which showed a foreign object lodged in his pelvis in the lower abdomen region.

When the medical team opted to take a second x-ray to ascertain the veracity of his claims, the new report showed that the bottle-shaped object had moved further upwards.

“When we asked him several times about what exactly happened, the patient told us that he accidentally inserted a glass bottle inside him and insisted that no one else had forced or manipulated him into doing this”, said Dr Sumitava Pachal, the lead surgeon of the operating team.

As multiple attempts to get the foreign object out without operating on the body failed, the surgical team attempted laparotomy, which involved cutting open the patient's stomach and pushing the object out via the rectum.

“Our biggest fear was what if the glass bottle breaks amid our attempts to extract it out. The usual operating procedure entails cutting the rectum and removing the bottle, just like delivering a baby from a woman’s uterus. But, we decided to adopt an innovative approach where we had to squeeze out the bottle via the rectum, literally like a tomato ketchup sachet”, the lead surgeon says.

From Left to right Dr Saurav Kanji (S3), Dr Aftab Alam (S4), Dr Rafi Moazzam (S2), Dr Sumitava Pachal (S1) Arnab Chatterjee

The patient didn't suffer any serious internal injuries as the surgical team comprising Dr Sumitava Pachal, Dr Rafi Moazzam, Dr Saurav Kanji, and Dr Aftab Alam, successfully removed the glass bottle along with a cork from his body all while keeping the gut integrity intact and the rectum completely safe. Because of the “unique approach", the patient's total recovery time was reduced from four months to less than a week.

Rectal foreign body cases are not common in a government hospital’s emergency ward, except in psychiatric patients. “We will discharge him within a day after talking to the neighbours who brought him to us as he lives alone”, Dr Pachal says in a concerning note.