Amazing X-Rays Show Knife Lodged in Woman's Throat

By ANTHONY BARTKEWICZ / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Credit: NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE

X-rays of a 30-year-old woman after swallowing a butter knife, because something made her laugh.

August 3, 2012 Updated Aug 3, 2012 at 11:07 AM PDT

Laughter was not the best medicine for a woman who stuck a butter knife down her throat. In fact, it landed her in the emergency room.\

The New England Journal of Medicine published X-ray images showing the knife lodged in the 30-year-old’s esophagus.

Drs. Aida Venado and Sarah Prebil said the woman had a history of bulimia, and stuck the knife down her throat to prove to her friends that she no longer had a gag reflex because of it. Something made her laugh, and the knife slid down into her esophagus.

She rushed to the emergency department at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, vomiting blood and complaining of chest pain.

Doctors were able to remove the knife through an endoscopy, and the woman did not suffer any damage to her throat or stomach.

Incredibly, her husband said she had swallowed a knife four years earlier. That time, surgery was required to remove it.

The woman was transferred to a psychiatric unit after the knife was removed, Drs. Venado and Prebil said.

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