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04th Jan 2018

Anyone Who Uses Or Has Used A Toothpick Should Be Very Worried About This Happening

Darragh Berry

If you use toothpicks frequently or if you’ve even used them as a once off this is now your worst fear.

Doctors in Australia were scratching their heads trying to figure out why a woman was having such severe abdominal pain.

The doctors in the Melbourne hospital diagnosed the woman with acute diverticulitis – a condition that causes the walls of the large bowel to become inflamed – after she had turned up to the A&E department four times in one month complaining of an almighty pain in the abdominal region.

They operated and found that part of her colon had ballooned in size and had been pierced by a toothpick.

The doctors carried out scans before the surgery but the toothpick did not show up in her stomach.

As well as this, the woman swore that she had not swallowed a toothpick.

What’s even more scary is that her doctors said that 50% of all patients who end up ingesting toothpicks don’t even realise they have swallowed one.

Definitely something to remember next time you’re drilling away at your teeth with one of these…

This case was included in a “medical mysteries” report by the British Medical Journal.

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