Doctors find octopus stuck in man's throat after he complained of difficulty swallowing food

A 55-year-old man in Singapore complained of difficulty swallowing after a meal that included the mollusc. He also started vomiting after the meal. He realised something was wrong and decided to visit a hospital. Doctors in Tan Tock Seng Hospital were astonished to find an eight-legged octopus stuck inside the food pipe.

Doctors conducted a CT scan, which revealed a super-dense mass in the man's oesophagus, according to a Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology report. Later, the doctors carried out an esophagogastroduodenoscopy, an examination involving a small, flexible tube, during which they found that the octopus lodged 5cm from the cardioesophageal junction - the oesophagus-stomach border.

Initial attempts at extracting or pushing the food mass were unsuccessful. Eventually, retrieval forceps were used to grasp the octopus head, gently pulling it into the stomach.

The incident took place in 2018 and was studied by leading medical journals. According to the case study published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology (CGH), the patient was discharged well two days later.

Food obstructions

Foreign body ingestion and food bolus impaction are frequent problems encountered in endoscopic practice. A total of 80%–90% of ingested food bolus pass spontaneously, 10%–20% require endoscopic management, and less than 1% require surgery.

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