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A rare case of perforation of a colorectal tumor by a fish bone

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Abstract

The accidental ingestion of foreign bodies is a common clinical issue. While most foreign bodies pass through the gastrointestinal (GI) tract without complications, a few cases unfortunately result in GI perforation. Fish bones are one of the most frequent foreign bodies found in the GI tract, and they are high-risk objects for GI perforation due to their hard and sharp-pointed ends. Here, we present a rare case of a 64-year-old man with perforation of a colorectal tumor by a fish bone. The patient received emergency Hartmann’s operation with lymph node dissection. Although the patient experienced recurrence in the liver rather than peritoneal dissemination, systemic chemotherapy was considerably effective, and conversion therapy with hepatectomy was successfully performed; the patient achieved 5-year relapse-free survival after the operation. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the perforation of a GI tumor by a fish bone. This rare case suggests the significant clinical implication that proper preoperative diagnosis and prompt surgical treatment lead to better postoperative outcomes for patients with tumor perforation by a foreign body.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Ming T, from Forte Inc. (www.forte-science.co.jp) for editing a draft of this manuscript.

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Correspondence to Kohei Yamashita.

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Kohei Yamashita, Tomoyuki Uchihara, Yoshihiro Komohara, Kota Arima, Shinichiro Uemura, Norihisa Hanada, and Hideo Baba declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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All procedures were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.

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Yamashita, K., Komohara, Y., Uchihara, T. et al. A rare case of perforation of a colorectal tumor by a fish bone. Clin J Gastroenterol 15, 598–602 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12328-022-01622-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12328-022-01622-8

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