14 DAY TRIAL // It was not very long ago when the news broke that, courtesy of a flawed cosmetics procedure, a woman woke up to find that bones were growing inside her eye.
Apparently, such freak medical accidents happen more often than one might suspect.
Thus, a 60-year-old woman from Sweden recently went to get a dental implant, and ended up needing significant medical attention after the drill used by her doctor came unstuck, slid down her throat and pierced her right lung. The Local reports that, immediately after realizing what had happened, the dentist tried to make the woman sit upright and cough. He hoped that this would help her get rid of the dental drill.
However, it seems that, by then, it was already too late, seeing how the medical instrument had already traveled too far inside the woman's body for her to be able to simply spit it out.
As Per Weitz, the medical chief of the Västmanland County Hospital in Västerås (i.e. the hospital where this incident occurred) explains, “She tried to spit it out, and was made to cough, but she’d already swallowed.”
In order to locate and remove the dental drill, doctors had to x-ray the patient and perform an emergency bronchoscopy.
“A pinky-sized tube was sent into her lung with a small camera and pliers to grab hold of the drill,” Peter Weitz went on to say.
The woman was allowed to go home the following day, yet it took almost a month before she made a full recovery and started feeling more like herself.
Needless to say, the doctors at the Västmanland County Hospital promised that, courtesy of stricter rules and regulations concerning medical practices, no such accidents would ever occur again at that medical facility.
The incident took place in September and Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare was fully informed about it.