A jilted wife swallowed $7,000 in US dollars in a desperate bid to hide the cash from her husband after she discovered he had cheated on her.

Colombian Sandra Milena Almeida swallowed the rolls of $100 notes in a 'fit of rage', according to the surgeons who removed the cash.

The woman had reportedly hidden the cash, which was saved up for a holiday, in the couple's home.

Surgeons extracted 57 $100 bills from a 30-year-old Colombian woman who swallowed $7,000 in cash

But, after discovering her partner's infidelity she was going to use it to leave him and gulped down the rolled-up notes whole in a bid to hide them.

The next day Ms Almeida, from Piedecuesta, northeastern Colombia, was rushed to hospital with severe abdominal pains.

She did not tell doctors about the money, but x-rays showed dozens of 3cm-long objects in her stomach and intestine.

The woman told local news that she had saved up the money after selling all of her electrical household items and swallowed it after a row with her husband

The doctors who removed the cash said it was most likely they had been ingested in an 'act of desperation'

Doctors at the Santander University Hospital in Bucaramanga managed to save $5,700 after cleaning and drying out the notes in the operating theatre.

Juan Pablo Serrano, chief surgeon at the hospital, said his first they thought was that Ms Almeida was a drugs mule as the objects in the X-ray images were similar to bags of narcotics.

He told Colombia's Radio Caracol: 'We took the patient into surgery for two procedures to clear the blockage, on her stomach and intestine.

'The dollar notes were washed and are in good condition, but the rest of the money was lost because of the gastric fluids.'