WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - In a rare event, a 63-year-old man's colon slips out of his body after a 'forceful' sneeze while eating breakfast with his wife at a restaurant, according to the American Journal of Medical Case Reports.
The event happened after his sutures were taken out of his abdomen on the same morning. The sutures were from a surgical procedure he had undergone to treat prostate cancer, New York Post reports.
'During breakfast, the man sneezed forcefully, followed by coughing. He immediately noticed a 'wet' sensation and pain in his lower abdomen. Looking down, he observed several loops of pink bowel protruding from his recent surgical site,' the journal stated.
Following the bowel evisceration, the wife called for an ambulance while the man covered the exposed colon with his shirt.
Paramedics, who reached the spot, found an 'approximately 3-inch vertical laceration with large amounts of bowel' protruding through the shirt.
Fortunately, the man had not lost much blood and was immediately taken to a local hospital.
'In the Emergency Department, the Urology service was consulted immediately. Vital signs were within normal limits. Pre-operative blood tests were obtained and noted to be unchanged from recent comparisons. A nasogastric tube was inserted, and the patient consented to receive an exploratory laparotomy,' the paper stated.
After the surgeons 'inspected the full length of the small bowel and noted no evidence of injury', they successfully placed the bowel back into the abdominal cavity with a series of figure-of-eight stitches.
After six days of hospitalization, the Florida man was placed on a normal diet before discharge.
The authors concluded the report by advising paramedics to 'control visible bleeding, address gross contamination by rinsing the bowel with sterile saline or sterile water, and cover the exposed bowel with a moist, sterile dressing,' while handling similar cases in future.
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