Doctors remove wire from woman's stomach 10 years after she swallowed it from her braces

A seven-centimetre orthodontic wire was removed successfully from the stomach of a 30-year-old woman after she entered the emergency department of the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, Western Australia, complaining about an incredible amount of stomach pain.

According to reports, a decade earlier, the woman used to wear braces and somehow she swallowed one of the wires from the braces. Doctors believe that the wire could have been in her bowels for up to 10 years.

Doctors were able to detect the metallic wire-shaped object in her abdomen after a CT scan.

"We were all a bit dumbfounded," Dr Talia Shepherd told Popular Science. "It wasn't what I was expecting to find at all."

"The other thing that we see not infrequently are fish bones," added Shepherd. "So, people swallow fish bones and then perforate through the bowel and I thought possible that's what it was. But looking at the density on the CT scan the radiologist said it was something metallic."

The wire has not done any long-term damage, according to Dr Shepherd. "The case is so unique is because normally if you swallow something like that it presents earlier," she added.

"People normally present much earlier, kind of right after they've swallowed it or when it's in the stomach really, because that's obviously where it has a high risk of causing a perforation," Dr Shepherd said.

She also added that the woman was totally well now.