64-year-old Chinese man's stomachache turns out to be due to toothbrush he swallowed 52 years ago

A man from China, 64, found a 52-year-old toothbrush stuck in his intestines after a hospital checkup.

The man had gone to the hospital after he felt a weird sensation in his stomach, according to the South China Morning Post.

Found in his small intestine

The man, whose surname is Yang, underwent an 80-minute-long endoscopic surgery to get the 17cm long, filthy toothbrush removed.

According to SCMP, it was one of the longest items the hospital had ever removed from a patient's digestive system in the past three years.

A doctor commented that "under normal circumstances" a toothbrush would have rotated, pressed and fatally punctured a person's inner tissue.

Yang had luckily not suffered such a fate, which would have then resulted in a potentially fatal intestinal perforation (a small hole through the inner issue).

The toothbrush had not budged much over the past 52 years.

Swallowed the toothbrush when he was 12 years old

According to media reports, Yang recalled that when he was 12, he had swallowed a toothbrush but was too worried to tell his parents about the incident.

Yang assumed at the time that the toothbrush would eventually dissolve and did not think too much about it.

Top image from HK01 and Sohu.