Jodhpur man swallows 63 coins, doctors take 2 days to remove them

A 36-year-old man in Jodhpur approached the trauma care centre of a local hospital complaining of severe abdominal pain, and doctors who examined him came up with a finding that surprised them: there was a huge lump of metal inside his body.

After further checks by gastroenterologists at Dr Mathura Das Mathur hospital and a lot of questions later, the man admitted he'd swallowed a few coins. He told them there could be 10 to 15, but the number turned out to be way off mark.

A team of doctors led by Dr Sunil Dadhich last Friday set about removing the coins through an endoscopic procedure, a TOI report said, which was carried out across two days. The final count of coins recovered from his stomach was 63.


The sheer number of coins he had swallowed made the task challenging for doctors. "On counting, it was found that he had ingested 63 coins of Re 1. The patient was fine and was discharged soon after the procedure,” Gastroenterology department head Narendra Bhargav told TOI.

His family told the doctors that the man had the habit of swallowing coins due to a mental disorder. Deliberate foreign body ingestion is normally seen in children; in adults it is associated with borderline personality disorder. The man has been advised psychological treatment.