Man, 18, was constipated for five days after a water-filled BALLOON blocked his small intestine

Constipated man, 18, suffered for five days after a water-filled balloon blocked his small intestine – but he claims he doesn’t know how it got there

• The man had been vomiting and suffering stomach pain for nearly a week  
• When surgeons looked inside his small intestine and found a 4cm-long balloon
• They said it had caused a ‘severe’ blockage and collapsed part of the bowel 
• Despite ‘repeated’ questioning the man could not explain his predicament

When most people feel sick or constipated for a few days they probably assume it’s down to a dodgy meal they’ve eaten.

Not many would jump to the conclusion there was a filled water balloon blocking their bowel.

But that’s exactly the diagnosis given to an 18-year-old man in Australia – and he claimed not to know how it got there, despite the balloon being tied with a knot.

The unnamed teenager went to hospital complaining of suffering from vomiting, nausea, stomach pain and being unable to empty his bowels for five days.

Doctors saw the man had an abnormally high heart rate, a slightly raised temperature and a swollen belly, so they began tests.

After finding an obstruction in his bowel, surgeons cut open his intestine and discovered a filled water balloon was blocking his gut.

The man was discharged after the balloon was removed and had an appointment scheduled for him to see a psychiatrist.

When doctors could not work out what was obstructing the 18-year-old’s small intestine surgeons decided to operate, and they discovered a 4cm-long water-filled balloon

When the 18-year-old man visited the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Australia, medics could not work out from a CT scan what was blocking his intestine.

For five days he had been throwing up, had pain in his abdomen and suffered ‘absolute constipation’ – a total inability to defecate.

It was clear his intestine had become stretched and something was obstructing it, so surgeons decided to operate, BMJ Case Reports revealed.

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They sliced open the man’s abdomen and pulled out his small intestine to examine it.

There, they felt a 4cm long soft, flexible lump which could be moved inside the intestine and had caused such a ‘severe’ blockage the bowel on the other side had collapsed.

The swelling, the surgeons discovered, was a rubber balloon which had been filled with water and appeared to be tied with a knot at the end.

And despite being asked multiple times, the man could not – or didn’t want to – explain how the balloon had got there.

Original scans (CT scan pictured) did not clearly reveal what was blocking the intestine because the balloon (marked by the arrows) was not as dense as a solid object would be so it was harder to spot – some healthy parts of the man’s body show as the same shade of grey

Surgeons pulled the man’s small intestine outside of his body to examine it, and they felt a small, soft lump which could be moved around – only when they cut open the organ did they realise it was a balloon

Report author Dr Zheng Andrew Zhang wrote: ‘No history of foreign body ingestion was given by the patient on repeat assessments postoperatively.’

In the report, the doctors don’t speculate on how the balloon got so deep into the man’s intestine but regularly refer to ‘foreign body ingestion’, suggesting he swallowed it.

They say it is rare for someone to need surgery to remove something they swallowed – it is thought to happen in around one per cent of cases – and is most common in children aged between six months and three years old.

The 18-year-old was discharged and scheduled for a psychiatry review to check on his mental health.    

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