2017 Volume 59 Issue 7 Pages 1487-1491
The patient was a 74-year-old woman. During hospitalization for dementia, she accidentally swallowed a watch and was brought to our endoscopy department. A simple abdominal X-ray visualized a foreign body in the stomach, and we attempted to extract it using an upper gastrointestinal endoscope. The watch had a hard, elastic metal band measuring 5 cm in diameter and was relatively heavy. It was difficult to extract the watch with devices available at our hospital. Therefore, using grasping forceps inserted through a forceps port of the endoscope, we grasped a retrieval net. One corner of the retrieval net was attached to the endoscope ; then, using the grasping forceps, we passed the retrieval net through the watch band, and released the retrieval net. Then, we grasped it again from outside the band to form a ring with the retrieval net, the grasping forceps, and the endoscope, and thereby succeeded in extracting the watch from the patient’s gastrointestinal tract. This technique is considered to be useful and minimally invasive for extracting heavy, ring-shaped foreign bodies in the gastrointestinal tract.
