A bet between friends over who could eat more at a hotpot meal ended with a 15-year-old boy on an operating table in China, where surgeons found two patches of dead tissue in the wall of his massively stretched stomach.
The case, published June 19, 2026, in Frontiers in Medicine by doctors at Qujing Second People's Hospital, describes a teen with no history of eating disorders who arrived in the early morning hours with severe abdominal pain, bloating, nausea and vomiting. He was in surgery less than two hours after admission, and his doctors credit that speed, along with his young age, for his survival.
