A 26-year-old man who accidentally swallowed a dental file during a routine dental procedure showed up at the hospital with no pain, no vomiting, and normal lab results. Roughly a day later, surgeons in India were cutting out a piece of his small intestine after the slim metal instrument punctured a pouch he had carried since birth.
The case, published in the April 2026 issue of the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research, comes from radiologists and surgeons at Saveetha Medical College and Hospital in Chennai. It shows how an object that appears to be moving along harmlessly can collide with anatomy nobody knew was there.
