Pune: Doctors in the city treating a 73-year-old man for unexplained stomach aches and nausea discovered something much worse than a stomach bug inside him – a “forgotten” stent left behind from a surgery two years ago.
The stent was inserted in 2022 to drain bile for a procedure called Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography, which fixes problems in the pancreatic ducts, liver and gallbladder.
The patient at the time was told by doctors to come back six weeks later, to get the stent removed. “But he never turned up, and the thing stayed in his body for two years,” said Dr Chetan Mhaske, chief surgeon at Mhaske Hospital, who performed the laparoscopic surgery to remove the stent.
Dr Mhaske said a year after the 2022 surgery, the man began complaining of stomach pain, bloating, and fever. “He also had jaundice. After ruling out all possible reasons, we performed an ultrasound and to our shock, spotted the stent inside,” Dr Mhaske said, adding that the patient had simply forgotten about the follow-up in 2022.
“That was the root cause of his problems. He had undergone the ERCP procedure at a govt hospital, during which the stent was placed to drain bile. This procedure combines use of endoscopy and fluoroscopy to diagnose and treat certain problems of the biliary or pancreatic ductal systems. He was told to get the stent removed later, but likely forgot,” Dr Mhaske said.
Assistant surgeon Dr Anup Kamble said: “If the patient had followed up, the stent could have been removed non-surgically through endoscopy. But because it had been left in there for such a long time, stones developed in the bile duct. So we had to surgically intervene through laparoscopy.”
The surgery to remove the stent was carried out in Sept. “There were follow-up medications and a procedure next month. He has since recovered. If it was just the stent, we would’ve removed it endoscopically, without surgery. But the two stones needed a surgical procedure,” Dr Mhaske said.
