A whole octopus. That’s what doctors at Tan Tock Seng Hospital found inside the throat of a 55-year-old man who arrived at the emergency room complaining of difficulty swallowing after a seafood dinner. 🐙
The CT scan showed a dense mass in the esophagus. The endoscopy confirmed the unthinkable: the animal was lodged just five centimeters from the junction between the esophagus and the stomach. They first tried to push it downward using the standard technique, but the octopus wouldn’t budge — and forcing it further would have perforated the esophagus. So the doctors did something rarely seen: they inserted the endoscope beyond the octopus, rotated the camera from inside the stomach, and extracted it by pulling it by the head with forceps. 😮
Two days later, the man was home. The case was published in a medical journal and shared by the American Gastroenterological Association, which also released the images. There are dinners you don’t forget.