Shocked surgeons uncovered a £1,500 stash of banknotes from the stomach of a 28-year-old man.
The bizarre extraction happened at a hospital in Ankara in Turkey. The man had ingested a plastic bag full of banknotes three months before it was recovered from the man’s gut.
The surgery hit the headlines after being featured in the October-December 2023 edition of the journal Acta Gastro-Enterologica Belgica.
The medical saga began when the patient, from Syria, was admitted to the hospital and underwent an abdominal ultrasound. To the astonishment of medical professionals, the scan revealed an “acoustic shadow” in the man’s stomach. Subsequent endoscopy unveiled a foreign object measuring approximately 40mm across.
Efforts to extract the object through the oesophagus failed as the package was too big to pass through, so doctors turned to surgery to remove the cash package wrapped.
It is reported that this was not the first time the man, who was trying to emigrate to Greece, has ingested foreign bodies.
