Woman who thought she had Crohn's disease for 6 years actually had a ketchup packet in her intestine

Photo: Heinz A Heinz ketchup packet, apparently swallowed unwittingly by a...

For six years, a British woman suffered bouts of severe pain in her abdomen accompanied by uncomfortable bloating. The attacks could last as long as three days.

Doctors diagnosed her with Crohn's disease, a serious inflammatory bowel disorder that can cause both symptoms, but the treatments they prescribed had no result.

The case, detailed in the British Medical Journal, proved to be a head scratcher. Finally physicians decided to operate on the 41-year-old woman.

During keyhole surgery, a team at the Heatherwood and Wexham Park hospital in Slough, U.K., made a startling discovery. Two pieces of a 6-year-old packet of Heinz ketchup had pierced the woman's intestinal wall, causing inflammation around the wound. Or, as they put it in their report: The "laparoscopy revealed an inflammatory mass in the terminal ileum, exposing two pieces of plastic bearing the word 'Heinz'."

After the plastic shards were removed, the patient's symptoms began easing immediately and had completely disappeared after five months.

Photo: Houston Chronicle Photo: Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 45 Caption Close Woman who thought she had Crohn's disease for 6 years actually had a ketchup packet in her intestine 1 / 45 Back to Gallery

Previously Crohn's disease was diagnosed in a patient who swallowed a toothpick, but this is believed to be the first case in which plastic packing was found to be the cause of Crohn's-like symptoms.

According to the report in the British Medical Journal, the woman had no memory of swallowing the packet.