Saudi Arabia: Man who swallowed car key saved

Cairo: A medical team at a Saudi hospital successfully performed a 15-minute endoscopic operation on a man and extracted a car key from his respiratory tract.

The man, aged 49, had been admitted into an emergency department at a hospital in Saudi Arabia’s coastal Al Qunfudah governorate suffering from a blockage in the airway.

Medical examinations showed a car key inside the respiratory passage. The man, a heart patient, had swallowed the key accidentally while playing with it.

He underwent an endoscopy and the key was extracted. He is staying at the hospital under medical observation until his health condition becomes stable.

It was not clear when the swallowing incident had happened.

Several such cases in Saudi Arabia recently prompted medical interventions, according to media reports.

In February, an Afghan man in his 70s was rushed to a hospital in Mecca after he had swallowed his denture accidentally in a rare case, Sabq reported at the time.

The man, who is also an obesity and high blood pressure patient, arrived at the hospital suffering from swallowing difficulty and pains in the upper chest.

Tests conducted for the man showed that the denture clung to the upper part of the esophagus with the metal tip of the denture stuck in the organ’s wall.

An emergency endoscopy was performed on him and successfully led to the removal of the denture.