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Published on: July 6, 2017
A retained foreign body mimicking colon cancer
Joseph M Meyerson1, Sabrena Noria, W Scott Melvin
1Division of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Department of Surgery, Wexner Medical Center, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.
Abstract:
Retained foreign bodies can be a challenging diagnosis due to the wide array of presentations and greatly varied range of time to detection. Here we report a case of a retained surgical sponge detected 5 years postoperatively after an extensive workup for colon cancer. This case demonstrates the novel finding of a retained surgical sponge appearing as colon cancer and serves as a reminder that symptoms that cannot be explained by a standard workup, in any patient who has undergone previous surgery, must have retained surgical instruments as a differential diagnosis.
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