Clinics and practice
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Clinics and practice · Jan 2012
Ingestion of a foreign body unmasks an asymptomatic small bowel carcinoid tumor.
Bowel obstruction is a common surgical admission around the world. On the other hand, small intestinal tumors, such as midgut carcinoid, are uncommon neoplasms and an infrequent cause of intestinal obstruction leading to hospitalization. ⋯ Narrowing of the small bowel due to a neoplasm can prohibit the passage of an accidentally ingested foreign object and produce an obstruction that neither the neoplasm nor the foreign body could have produced alone. We hereby report a case in which an accidentally ingested piece of foreign material leads to the finding of a small, early stage, asymptomatic, midgut carcinoid cancer in the proximal ileum that would have otherwise eluded detection for several years.