Last week, a Chinese man went to the hospital after experiencing severe chest pain and was shocked to learn that his discomfort was caused by the house keys he thought he had lost the night before after getting drunk with his friends.
On June 7th, a 26-year-old man, identified solely as Chang, from Guangdong, China, went out for drinks with his friends, to celebrate the end of another long work week. When he got home in the middle of the night, he searched for his keys, but couldn’t find them, so he called someone inside and asked them to let him. He was pretty drunk, so he didn’t give his lost keys a second thought, instead going straight to bed. The next morning, as the numbing effect of the alcohol started to wear off, Chang started experiencing a sharp pain in his chest, so he went to the local Dongguan Hospital to have it checked out.
When doctors performed an X-ray of his torso, they were shocked to see what looked like a key lodged in his esophagus. They asked him about it, and he admitted to losing his house keys the night before, but couldn’t offer any explanation as to how they wound up inside his body.
Staff at Dongguan Hospital analyzed the situation and decided that allowing the keys to pass through Chang’s digestive system and be eliminated naturally was too risky. At the same time, trying to pull it out using endoscopy equipment could rupture his esophagus. The third option was an emergency surgery.
After the anesthesiologist administered Chang a drug that helped relax his muscles, a gastroenterologist was able to pull out the metal key and plastic access card from the man’s esophagus.