A woman in the United Kingdom spent six years with agonizing stomach pains. Doctors diagnosed her with Crohn’s Disease, though they were baffled when none of the standard treatments worked.
Finally, the 41-year-old woman’s physicians decided to go in surgically to find the source of the inflammation, and discovered two pieces of plastic bearing the word “Heinz.”
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Somehow, the patient has swallowed a ketchup packet, which had become lodged in her small intestine. Doctors at Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospital in Slough said that the perforated edges of the packet, intended to make it easier to open, had actually cut into the lining of her stomach. That was a large cause for the misdiagnosis of Crohn’s Disease.
The doctors treating the woman published a paper about their findings in the British Medical Journal. They explained that the case is odd, and might be the first of its kind — but it offered some helpful illuminations about Crohn’s Disease.
“This case highlights that an inflammatory mass in the small intestine caused by the perforation of ingested foreign body can mimic Crohn’s disease,” reads the report. “To our knowledge, this is the first report of a synthetic plastic packaging causing ileo-caecal junctional perforation mimicking Crohn’s disease.”
As for the patient, doctors said that once the foreign object was removed, she immediately began to heal. She told her physicians she had no memory of even using a ketchup packet, let alone swallowing one whole. She is expected to make a full recovery.
