A Sewing Needle in the Liver
A Sewing Needle in the Liver
An 85-year-old woman with Alzheimer's dementia was hospitalized because of prolonged fever, breathlessness, and generalized pain. Blood analysis showed an elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and temporal artery biopsy showed giant cell arteritis. Prednisone therapy was instituted, and the patient's condition partially improved. Incidentally, abdominal radiographs revealed a sewing needle in the right upper quadrant, and computed tomography (CT) showed that the needle was lodged in the liver parenchyma.
Demented adults and children frequently swallow foreign bodies, which usually pass through the gastrointestinal tract uneventfully. Nevertheless, silent gastrointestinal perforation and migration of the foreign body throughout the abdominal cavity may also occur, illustrating that there are no insurmountable barriers in the pathways of foreign bodies. We describe a demented patient who had prolonged fever and who was incidentally found to have a sewing needle in her liver. Presumably, she had inadvertently swallowed the foreign body before.
An 85-year-old woman with Alzheimer's dementia was hospitalized because of prolonged fever, breathlessness, and generalized pain. Blood analysis showed an elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and temporal artery biopsy showed giant cell arteritis. Prednisone therapy was instituted, and the patient's condition partially improved. Incidentally, abdominal radiographs revealed a sewing needle in the right upper quadrant, and computed tomography (CT) showed that the needle was lodged in the liver parenchyma.
Demented adults and children frequently swallow foreign bodies, which usually pass through the gastrointestinal tract uneventfully. Nevertheless, silent gastrointestinal perforation and migration of the foreign body throughout the abdominal cavity may also occur, illustrating that there are no insurmountable barriers in the pathways of foreign bodies. We describe a demented patient who had prolonged fever and who was incidentally found to have a sewing needle in her liver. Presumably, she had inadvertently swallowed the foreign body before.
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