Surgeons in the Democratic Republic of the Congo opened a 31-year-old man's abdomen with a perforated stomach ulcer still on their list of possibilities. They found a large collection of blood, a swollen and bleeding pancreas, and scattered white plaques on the fatty tissue around his intestines that looked like drips of candle wax.
The surgeons, from the Université Officielle de Mbujimayi, published photographs of the findings on Aug. 31, 2026, in the Pan African Medical Journal. They describe "multiple whitish plaques" on the omentum and mesentery, with "the classic 'candle-wax' appearance consistent with enzymatic fat necrosis." These are spots where the man's own pancreatic enzymes had broken down his abdominal fat.
