A 76-year-old man in Japan was eating inari sushi when he swallowed part of his denture. Ten days later, he arrived at the hospital with persistent pain in his upper abdomen and a worry that the missing piece was still inside him. A CT scan of his chest and abdomen showed no sign of it.
It was there all along. When doctors passed an endoscope into his stomach, they found the darkened resin appliance resting in the middle of the organ. Physicians at Asao General Hospital in Kawasaki and a Tokyo dental clinic described the case Aug. 13 in Cureus, and it highlights a quiet trade-off in modern dental work: a denture without metal can be very hard to see once it is swallowed.
