In a rare medical operation, doctors in northern Amritsar city successfully removed 40 knives from a man’s stomach.
Surjeet Singh, a policeman by profession, sought medical help after complaining of severe stomach ache and low appetite.
After preliminary investigation, doctors thought Singh had developed tumour in his stomach. But they were taken aback on finding metallic substances in the biopsy report.
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Surgeon Jitendra Malhotra said Singh suffered from a psychological disorder where he had an urge to swallow down knives.
“As soon as we placed the camera inside, we saw some metallic material on our screen. In those metallic materials, there were shards of blades and woods which were very rare and surreal. I had never seen something like this in my 20-years of practice. We thought they wereknives and retrospectively asked the patient and he said he has this urge to swallow knives. He said he had swallowed 28 knives,” said Malhotra on Saturday (August 20).
A team of five surgeons conducted the five-hour-long operation to remove all the knives from Singh’s stomach on August 17 (Thursday).
“The patient said that he had swallowed 28 knives but we removed 40. To check that there were no more knives left and to ensure that the patient does not come up with the same problem again, we conducted a metallic scan of the whole body including the stomach, and we found that we had removed all the knives from the stomach. The surgery was a success,” said Malhotra.
Singh said he developed the habit of swallowing knives while recuperating from a road accident.
“I met with an accident in Chandigarh and could not walk properly after that. I used to sit idle and started swallowing down knives,” said Singh, adding, “it pained a little.”
Singh’s condition is now stable.