A Sewing Pin Found in a Teenager’s Heart

Foreign bodies have been found in the heart before, but they are rare, especially in children and teens, the report said. In 2016, doctors in China reported the case of a 48-year-old woman who experienced a stroke after a needle pierced her chest and became stuck in her heart, Live Science previously reported. 

The new case appears to be one of the first in which the patient unknowingly swallowed a needle that ended up in his heart.

Doctors believe the pin migrated directly from his stomach into his heart, although it may have migrated from another place along the gastrointestinal tract, such as from the esophagus or small intestine, Dr. Bonnie Mathews, lead author of the new report and an assistant professor of pediatrics at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, told Live Science.

The authors say their report may have implications for the treatment of sharp objects that are swallowed. Current guidelines say that sharp objects should be removed if they are causing symptoms, but there’s less clarity on what to do when they are not causing symptoms.

Some doctors say that if a swallowed foreign body is small and not causing symptoms, it will likely pass through the gastrointestinal tract without complications, and so patients can be observed with repeated scans to see if they develop problems.

But the new case "highlights the potential devastating complications of foreign body ingestion," the authors wrote in the report. "Serious consideration should be given to the … removal of all ingested sharp, linear, gastric foreign bodies to prevent complications due to migration such as the one described in this case," they concluded.

Fortunately, the teen recovered after his surgery and "has had no complications to my knowledge," Mathews said.