Impalement injury by glass shard with delayed colonic perforation

Abstract

A 66-year-old man experienced a traumatic injury after a fall on top of a glass tea table, which caused some superficial lacerations all around the body. He was examined in the emergency room by a physician. The physician could not feel any foreign body upon wound exploration and sutured the laceration. Fourteen months after the injury, he developed progressive abdominal pain. On emergency room and abdominal x-ray showed a foreign body, which a CT scan revealed as an intraabdominal glass shard. The glass presumably impaled his abdominal wall as a result of his previous traumatic injury. The patient underwent laparotomy, which revealed a large glass (16x1cm) perforating the transverse colon. It was extracted and the perforation closed with a lineal stapler. There was no need of bowel resection and the patient was discharged home nine days after the intervention.