A 44-year-old man in Tanzania discovered pus leaking from his chest and upon examination by doctors, it was found that there was a blade hidden in his chest cavity, which he had not noticed for 8 years and felt no pain.
According to a report from Live Science, the man sought medical attention after experiencing continuous pus drainage from a hole below his right nipple for 10 days. He informed the doctors that he did not experience any pain, breathing difficulties, or fever, and his vital signs were normal.
During the examination, doctors discovered that the front of his right rib cage was flat, and his right chest couldn’t fully expand during inhalation. In the medical report, doctors noted that a “foul-smelling” pus was leaking from a cavity below his right nipple.
The man claimed during the examination process that 8 years ago he had a “heated dispute” with someone, resulting in repeated stabbings to his chest, back, abdomen, and face. At that time, he did not undergo imaging examinations, only receiving surface emergency treatment for multiple knife wounds. He stated that these injuries had not caused any health issues for him over the past 8 years.
However, X-ray examination revealed a metal blade lodged in the man’s chest cavity, extending from the back of his ribs to the front, piercing his back and nearing his right shoulder blade.
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The blade had slipped between the fifth and sixth ribs on his back, then lodged there with the tip positioned between the third and fourth ribs at the front. CT scans showed that his scapula and multiple ribs had already healed from fractures, surrounded by layers of pus and necrotic or dying tissue.
The body forms a protective fibrous capsule process to shield itself from foreign objects, enveloping the foreign object with collagen and other fibers to limit damage and inflammation to surrounding tissues.
This fibrous capsule formation was likely the reason the man had been unaware of the blade in his chest cavity for 8 years.
Doctors performed open-chest surgery to extract the blade, drained accumulated pus, rinsed his chest cavity with saline solution, installed a drainage tube, and then sutured the wound. The man subsequently underwent seven days of broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment and was closely monitored for signs of infection.
On the eighth day, the drainage tube was removed. The man was discharged two days later. He returned for two follow-up appointments at the hospital: one after two weeks post-surgery and another after six weeks post-surgery. Both follow-ups showed no signs of infection or other complications.
It is not uncommon for partially or fully penetrating foreign objects to remain in the chest cavity after trauma, but records of objects like blades being lodged in the chest are relatively rare in medical literature. Reports indicate that in most cases, these foreign objects are identified and removed within weeks or months, unlike in this case where it remained undetected for several years.