Andhra Pradesh   

The chord that could cost one's life

Special Correspondent

FOREIGN OBJECT: An entangled nylon thread around the urinary bladder comes out along with a stone formed inside after a surgical operation on a 20-year old man.- PHOTO: K_GAJENDRAN

It was a long, knotted nylon thread encased in a stone. Don't get intrigued. This is not about gems or precious stones but a rare medical condition found in the urinary bladder of a 20-year-old man.

City Urologist K. Sreedhar who performed endoscopic lithotripsy on the youth to fragment the stone in the urinary bladder, said that he was surprised to find whitish threads as he tried to break the stone. " After breaking a major portion of the stone, I was amazed to find that it was a thick nylon thread", he said in a press release issued here on Friday.

The patient was brought to Dr. Sreedhar's Kidney and Multi-Speciality Hospital at Mehdipatnam in the city with problem of poor urinary stream, severe frequency (every 15 minutes) and occasional bleeding in urine for the past two to three years. He used to get attacks of fever and chills for several years and had been taking medicines with no relief.

Medical condition

Initial tests, six months ago showed that he had an irregular stone of 3 cm in the urinary bladder. However when the patient went again with the problem of increasing urinary obstruction a few days ago, tests revealed that the bladder size had increased. Dr. Sreedhar said that he must have inadvertently inserted the thread into the genitalia while playing with it during his childhood. He underlined the importance of keeping a watch on children as foreign bodies could cause complications like perforating organs, obstruction and infection.

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