Doctors are used to being presented with… unusual complaints. But one patient’s issue was bananas by anyone’s standards.
The 34-year-old man turned up at his local A&E department suffering from stomach pain, nausea and vomiting which he said had begun seven hours earlier.
He was suffering so much that he couldn’t eat or drink, he said, and hadn’t been to the toilet since the day before.
So what was the cause of his ailment?
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He’d eaten a banana stuffed in a condom.
The baffling case study was published in the journal Cureus earlier this week, which cited it as the first of its kind.
Its authors wrote that “a literature search on condom-related intestinal obstructions yielded numerous reports of cases wherein the condom was filled with drugs”.
However, “few reports, involved fluid-filled condoms”. And none on fruit-filled ones.
The stomach-churning banana was safely removed (left), a CT scan showed it wedged in the man's bowelCureus
The “otherwise healthy” man admitted to having swallowed the double-sheathed banana during a “hormonal rage” 24 hours earlier.
The researchers noted that he had a “history of depression” but said he “denied intent of self-harm or prior history of foreign body ingestion.”
And for anyone wondering, he insisted that he hadn’t been on drugs at the time nor was he drunk.
Fortunately, surgeons were able to remove the ill-advised snack from his small bowel and he went on to make a full recovery.
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