Man's constant stomach ache turns out to be a cigarette lighter leaking fluid into his gut

He had a 5mm gastric ulcer

(Harris et al., 2017.)

A man suffering from constant stomach pain found out that it was in fact due to a cigarette lighter he had swallowed which was leaking fluid into his gut.

He went to the hospital in August 2016 complaining of stomach pain, nausea and vomiting, according to a report on the case which was published in August of this year.

The report, published in the journal Case Reports in Emergency Medicine, explains that foreign bodies that have been ingested usually pass seamlessly through the gastrointestinal tract.

However, that was not the case for one 49-year-old American man.

At the hospital, his blood and urine tests came back normal, but an X-ray revealed “a foreign body resembling a cigarette lighter visualised within the stomach.”

The lighter was in an upside-down position and was leaking fluid, the toxic chemicals in which had caused the man to develop a “nonbleeding cratered gastric ulcer,” which was 5mm in diameter at the widest point.

“Cigarette lighters pose a unique problem given that not only its shape can lead to obstruction but also leakage of its contents can be disastrous,” the report explains.

“Harmful substances contained in lighter fluid include benzene, butane, hexamine, lacolene, naphtha, and propane.”

(Harris et al., 2017. (Harris et al., 2017.)

However it wasn’t the lighter fluid alone that was responsible for tearing a hole in the man’s gastric tissue - his own stomach acid also played a part.

The lighter fluid facilitated this though, as it was eating away at the protective layer of mucus that separates the stomach acid from the stomach lining.

“Ulcers from foreign bodies are not that common,” said Dr. Asim Shuja, a gastroenterologist at the University of Florida College of Medicine who treated the man.

But when the foreign body has the potential to leak fluid into the body, they can be more dangerous.

The report explains that the lighter was successfully removed by flexible endoscopy using a polypectomy snare.

The man then took medication for eight weeks and the ulcer had healed by the time he went to his two-month follow-up appointment.

It’s not known how common lighter ingestion is, but the report states that there are only two other cases that have been documented, both of which were in other countries and led to bowel obstruction.

Quite why the lighter was ingested is unclear, however the report notes that the man had “a history of foreign body ingestion requiring laparotomy for spoon removal.”