Pain in woman's neck turns out to be 3-cm-long fish bone lodged in her throat

Sea food may be tempting but eating fish comes with its fair share of struggles as one needs to deal with bones which can be swallowed accidentally. While it may cause some irritation and people have common remedies for tackling such situations, sometimes things can get serious.

A 71-year-old woman from US was moved to the emergency room at a hospital after she complained of pain in her neck for eight days. It turned out that the irritation in her throat was caused by a three-centimetre-long fish bone which she accidentally swallowed.

The bone was revealed in a CT scan after physical examinations and X-ray failed to show any reason for the woman’s pain. The bone lodged in her neck had pierced her throat and had narrowly missed an artery.

Doctors had to perform an exploratory surgery to remove the bone following which the symptoms went away. While swallowing bones isn’t unusual, they rarely cause such damage.