Doctors remove knife patient unknowingly had stuck in chest for 8 years

Doctors in Tanzania discovered a knife blade lodged inside a 44-year-old man’s chest cavity, which he had unknowingly carried for nearly a decade.

The unnamed man first went to the hospital after noticing pus leaking from his nipple and not knowing the cause. Upon performing an X-ray of his chest, doctors discovered that the 3-inch blade of a knife was embedded on the right-hand side of his chest cavity, just below the shoulder.

According to the case study published by the National Library of Medicine, the patient had explained to medical staff that they had been involved in a “violent altercation” eight years previously, which was believed to have been the source of the knife injury.

At the time of the original incident, no radiological investigation was conducted due to a lack of facilities, and the wounds healed.

Man’s surgery to remove knife successful

Despite the blade’s presence inside his body, the man stated he had experienced no breathing difficulty, fever, or chest pain, and his vital signs were considered to be within normal range upon examination.

Dead tissue had surrounded the foreign object, leading to the external symptoms of a “foul-smelling pus.”

Surgeons successfully removed the blade, and the patient recovered without complications beyond a defect in his right lung being observed during surgery.

The case, described as rare in the case study, as such injuries are usually discovered not long after they occur, is being used to highlight the “significant challenges in trauma care within resource-limited settings.”

Medical staff described the case as extremely rare, noting how unusual it was for a foreign object of that size to remain in the body for so long without detection.