Pune: 40-Year-Old Woman Swallows Toothbrush While Cleaning Her Tongue In Extremely Rare Incident

Remember the Spanish woman who shocked doctors for gulping a toothbrush last year? A similar incident has unfolded in India recently. A woman from Pune accidentally swallowed a 20-cm-long toothbrush while cleaning her tongue. Aged 40, her case become the first of its kind in Maharashtra, leaving medical experts in the entire country stunned.

Pune woman swallows toothbrush!

The Pune woman was rushed to the DY Patil Hospital in the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation for rescuing herself from dying by choking the foreign object into her body.

Doctor reacts to unusual case

"It seemed impossible at first", Dr Abhijeet Karad, the gastroenterologist of the hospital who attended the case, told Pune Mirror on wondering how the woman could have swallowed a toothbrush.

"Toothbrush ingestion is extraordinarily rare worldwide, with fewer than 30 reported cases", he added, pointing out that patients with concerning mental health conditions are prone to the incident, including those suffering from schizophrenia, bulimia, or anorexia.

Karad mentioned that the healthcare comes across cases of people swallowing small objects such as coins, this one involving a huge toothbrush was reported as Maharashtra’s first recorded case of such bizarre nature.

Similar cases

In 2013, a 35-year-old man was taken to the M.M. Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (MMIMSR) in Haryana after he had mistakenly consumed a toothbrush. Shockingly, the man approached the healthcare only two months after swallowing the toothbrush, and an X-ray performed on him indicated the presence of a foreign object in his stomach.

Meanwhile, a case report by the Department of Gastroenterology, Seth G.S. Medical College and KEM Hospital in Mumbai (published in 2019) read, "We encountered three cases of accidental toothbrush ingestion. These cases occurred over the period October 2013–May 2014 and involved three men all in their 3rd decade of life". "All three patients presented to the Emergency Department with a history of accidental swallowing of the toothbrush when trying to clean the posterior part of the tongue with tongue cleaner on the brush head", it added.