Man with ‘stabbing heart pains’ discovered it was caused by toothpick swallowed

The toothpick was successfully removed after surgery

How a toothpick swallowed got wedged in the heart is still an amazement for doctors who made the discovery during a 7-hour operation on a man who was wrongly diagnosed with pneumonia after going to hospital in January with high fever.
Horacio Rodriguez, 42 was told he had a heart infection and was put on antibiotics when he went for a second opinion after losing weight, coughing up blood and suffering chest pains. Surgeons knew he had something inside his heart that shouldn’t be there before they opened him up at Hospital Fernandez in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires. They thought it might be a catheter inserted into Horacio when he had a blood transfusion as a teenager.

X-ray showing the toothpick embedded in his heart

Describing the discovery of a toothpick as as' unique', hospital heart specialist Fernando Cichero said: “It was incredible when we operated on him.
“First we took the blood out of his heart and then we saw it clearly. It was a toothpick.
“Nobody could believe it at first.
"I’ve discussed it with colleagues in Argentina and other countries and no-one’s ever heard or seen anything like it before.
“When Horacio came round and I told him what had been inside him, he began to laugh and admitted to having eaten a load of appetizers at the end of last year.”
Horacio said:
 “I was in and out of hospital for around six months because they didn’t know what was wrong.
“It was only after several ultrasound scans that a specialist saw something that hadn’t been picked up before and decided to operate on me thinking he’d found a catheter.
“It wasn’t until the last couple of months that I felt a stabbing pain in my chest.
 “Perhaps the next time I eat salami or cheese I’ll make sure they’ve got little flags attached to them so I can see them.”
Experts say they believe the toothpick could have entered his heart through his oesophagus or superior vena cava via his right atrium.
Toothpicks are one of the most common objects accidentally swallowed and can cause major health complications - although it is unheard of for them to reach the heart intact and stay stuck there for so long without causing death.

Source: Mirror