About one in every 50 people carries a small blind pouch on the wall of the small intestine, left behind when a duct that fed the embryo failed to close. It is called a Meckel diverticulum, and for nearly everyone it does nothing at all.
For a 67-year-old man in Turkiye, it grew to 14 centimeters, became inflamed and starved of blood, glued itself to the surrounding bowel, and shut his intestine down. Surgeons at Giresun University described the case in the World Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery.
