When surgeons opened the abdomen of a 79-year-old man with a stubborn bowel blockage, they found a hard, movable lump about 4 centimeters across lodged near the end of his small intestine. It was not hair, plant fiber, or swallowed plastic. Laboratory testing confirmed it contained ivermectin, the antiparasitic drug in a tube of horse paste he had swallowed weeks earlier.
The case, written up by surgeons from the Yale School of Medicine and the West Haven Veterans Affairs medical center, was published in May in the journal Cureus. To the authors' knowledge, it is the first reported bezoar formed from congealed ivermectin paste and the first reported case of ivermectin ingestion that required an operation.
