When he was 6 years old, a boy pushed a one-cent coin into his left nostril and never told his parents. It caused no symptoms for years, and eventually he forgot it was there. At 35, after a year of worsening, foul-smelling discharge from that nostril, he went to a clinic, where X-rays showed the coin still lodged deep inside his nose.
By then, the coin had corroded and turned so brittle that it broke apart during removal. Surgeons recovered it in six pieces. Physicians in Saudi Arabia, including ear, nose and throat surgeons at King Abdulaziz Medical City in Riyadh, described the case in AME Case Reports, a peer-reviewed journal, in a report published online in January 2026.
