(Web Desk) – A man noticed pus oozing from his chest, and it ended up revealing a knife blade in his thoracic cavity.
The patient: A 44-year-old man in Tanzania. The symptoms: For 10 days, pus oozed from an opening in the man's chest below his right nipple, prompting him to visit the emergency room. He told doctors he had no pain or difficulty breathing. He did not have a fever, and his vital signs were normal.
What happened next: When the doctors examined the man, they found that his rib cage on the right side of his chest was flattened at the front and that his chest did not fully expand on that side when he inhaled. They confirmed that "foul-smelling" pus was leaking from a cavity under the nipple, they wrote in a report of the case.
During the examination, the man reported that eight years earlier he had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest, back, abdomen and face during a "violent altercation."
No imaging tests were performed at that time, and he received only superficial first-aid treatment for the multiple knife wounds. For eight years, he had no health issues resulting from those injuries, he said. The diagnosis: An X-ray revealed a large metallic knife blade lodged inside the man's thoracic cavity. Also known as the chest cavity, this hollow chamber is located above the abdomen and contains the heart and lungs.
The blade, which extended from the rear of the rib cage to the front, had entered the man's back near his right scapula, or shoulder blade.
The knife's blade slid between the fifth and sixth ribs in the patient's back and then stuck there, with the knife's tip positioned between the third and fourth ribs at the front of his rib cage. A CT scan showed healed fractures in his scapula and in several ribs. Layers of pus and dead or dying tissue surrounded the knife blade.
One way the body protects itself against foreign objects is through a process called fibrous capsule formation, in which the immune system cocoons the object in collagen and other fibers to limit damage and inflammation in the surrounding tissue. Such encapsulation of the knife is likely what enabled the man to spend the next eight years unaware that there was a blade inside his chest, according to the report.