A man who stuffed a live eel up his backside was left in agony when the sharp-toothed sea creature tried to bite its way out of his digestive tract.
Horrified medics in Vietnam discovered the 26-inch long eel in X-ray scans taken to diagnose the cause of his pain on July 27, local media reports.
They found the eel had attempted to chew its way out by biting through the wall of his large intestine.
But initial attempts to remove the fish with a probe through his anus were thwarted when medics at Viet Duc Hospital, in Hanoi, found a lemon stuffed up there too.
Surgeons had to cut in through his abdomen to remove the eel with forceps, with stomach-churning pictures showing the creature on the operating table.
Doctors manipulated the lemon back down through the patient’s anus until it popped out before stitching up the hole in his intestine and cleaning out leaked faecal matter.
Medics say he would have died without treatment and will have to live with a colostomy bag for the rest of his life.
Hospital officials have not named the patient and only identified him as a 31-year-old Indian national.
Hospital Deputy Director of the Center for Colon and Rectal Surgery Dr Le Nhat Huy said they had performed many surgeries to remove foreign objects from patients’ anuses.
He told local media how they had removed everything from glass bottles to sex toys.
But this was, he said, the first time they had had to remove a live animal.
Dr Huy warned: ‘Eels are animals that can survive in anaerobic conditions for a long time and can puncture the digestive tract.
‘People should absolutely not insert animals through their anus to create a strong sensation, as the consequences can be severe.’
Experts say that as long as they are damp and out of direct sunlight eels can survive many days out of water.
Disturbingly, it’s not the first time that surgeons have had to remove the critter from a person’s insides.
In March, a 34-year-old man from the northern Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam, was admitted to hospital with severe abdominal cramps after complaining of stomach aches.
Local media claims he was given an X-ray and an ultrasound, which showed he had a foreign body lurking in his abdomen.
It had caused him intestinal perforation and peritonitis — a life-threatening complication when the tissue lining the abdomen becomes swollen.
The patient was given urgent surgery to remove the mystery object – which the shocked surgeons discovered was a 30-cm long live eel.
When quizzed about how the eel could have ended up in his belly, the patient couldn’t provide an answer.
But medics believe it entered his anus, slid up his colon and somehow entered his abdomen.
Items can leak out of the intestines and into the bowel if patients suffer intestinal perforation.
