Europe: 33-year-old man swallows entire Nokia 3310 cellphone, doctors safely remove it

Doctors in the city of Pristina, Kosovo, in Southeastern Europe, were rendered shocked on Sunday, September 5, after they removed an entire Nokia 3310 cellphone from a man’s body in a successful life-saving surgery at a hospital. According to local media reports, the 33-year-old man somehow swallowed the phone that remained in his stomach for shocking four complete days. A surgeon who led the medical team for the operation of the man, whose identity has not been disclosed, posted photos of the procedure on the Facebook of the endoscopic x-rays. 

According to Skender Teljaku, the doctors managed to remove the phone out of the man’s stomach in three parts without cutting or opening his body. In the endoscope images, one could see a large foreign object settled inside the man's stomach. The team managed to break the phone and retrieve it from the man’s body in parts using a special device called the endoscope. The electronic gadget otherwise would have proved fatal if the treatment was not sought at the apt time, as per the medics. The man visited the hospital in Pristina, Kosovo's capital complaining of a stomach ache. It although remains unclear how the patient managed to swallow the whole phone. 

"The male 33 years old had a small phone 4 days ago. With endoscopic roads, so without cutting the stomach, we pulled the split phone into three parts. No complications," surgeon Skender Telaku wrote in a Facebook post. 

Local European outlet Ekspres reports that the doctors feared the battery would have exploded and released the chemicals into the man's gut; the battery was the major concern of worry for the team of surgeons. The doctor said the man’s life was potentially in danger, adding that the patient is now recovering and expected to be in good health in the weeks ahead. While Ada health states that 80 percent of non-edible, foreign objects that may have been accidentally swollen pass out of the body in faeces, the smaller or large electronic objects that are sharp or toxic are hazardous and need medical intervention at the right time. 

Crocodile swallows tourist's shoe 

In a separate incident, the doctors at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine performed surgery on a Nile crocodile named Anuket and retrieved a shoe from its stomach that it may have swallowed at a farm. The crocodile, which weighed 341 pounds, underwent a complicated abdominal surgery where medics removed the shoe that had slipped off the feet of a tourist ziplining into the crocodile habitat, which the reptile swallowed. 

Image Credit: Facebook/Skender Telaku