New Delhi : Doctors remove 20cm-long knife stuck in a man's liver

New Delhi: In a bizarre incident, a 28-year-old man with a history of psychosis had ingested a kitchen knife. Luckily, the 20cm-long knife didn’t damage any of his vital organs like the heartand lungs, and got stuck in the liver without causing any immediate problem.

It was only a month later that the daily wage labourer from Palwal in Haryana developed issues like difficulty in eating, weight loss, fever, and then abdominal pain that soon became unbearable.

Local hospitals referred him to Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi where an ultrasound test and an X-ray of the abdomen revealed the blade of the kitchen knife stuck in the liver. The patient was then referred to AIIMS for surgery. The man told doctors that one and a half months ago during the lockdown, when “he was in the kitchen, he felt like eating the knife. He tried to chew it and finally gulped it down with water”. Doctors at AIIMS needed nearly three hours to remove the knife with the help of ultrasound guidance on July 19.

A doctor said the blade was entirely inside the liver and the handle inside the duodenum, the first part of small intestine. The knife had perforated the duodenum and gone into the liver, and led to bleeding, infection and abscess formation in the liver and sepsis. The patient’s haemoglobin level was very low and water had accumulated in his right chest.

According to Dr N R Dash, professor of GI surgery and liver transplantation at AIIMS, they first controlled the sepsis and gave him blood transfusion. A tube was put inside the liver under X-ray guidance to drain the pus out. It sucked around 100ml of pus every day for four-five days. Another tube was inserted to take out the water from the chest, Dr Dash explained.

After seven days, when the patient’s condition improved to a certain extent, the surgery was carried out by opening the intestine.“The patient was in the ICU for seven days. He is now out of danger and out of ICU,” Dr Dash added.


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