Doctors find electric toothbrush in little boy’s intestines

This is not the way you want to clean out your intestines.

What’s worse than a toothbrush in your stomach?How about an electric one in your digestive tract.

That’s right, doctors in Saudi Arabia were flabbergasted after discovering an automated teeth-cleaning device inside a 9-year-old boy on Christmas day.

The gastrointestinal fiasco occurred in Mecca after the unnamed child accidentally swallowed the head of an electric brush — although the circumstances surrounding the incident are still unclear, Jam Press reported.

Following his inadvertent “deep clean,” the little boy was subsequently rushed to the Makkah Maternity and Children Hospital.

Alarming X-rays revealed that the brush was caught in the boy’s stomach, where it had the potential to cause a deadly intestinal blockage if it wasn’t removed. [Warning: Viewer discretion advised for photographs below.]


The automated brush post-extraction.
The automated brush post-extraction.
Jam Press

Thankfully, surgeons were able to remove the intestinal interloper with an endoscope — a thin lighted tube with a camera — during a 20-minute procedure.

The young patient has since been discharged from the hospital and is reportedly recovering well following surgery.

Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time someone has accidentally swallowed an unlikely item.

In a freak intestinal accident in 2020, a Georgia boy was rushed to the hospital after swallowing an AirPod he got as a Christmas present.

However, doctors decided against surgery, instead suggesting that the 7-year-old wait for the wireless earbud to “pass.”


The head of the brush had become lodged in the boy's stomach and threatened to block the intestine.
The head of the brush had become lodged in the boy’s stomach and threatened to block the intestine.
Jam Press

On a decidedly more mature level, an 80-year-old Chinese man also wound up in the hospital in 2019 after he reportedly swallowed his dentures while eating a stack of pancakes.

“I ate two buns, then I wanted to eat a pancake,” the patient, identified as “Mr. Shang,” described. “While eating the pancake, I couldn’t find my dentures. I needed my teeth to eat the pancake but I couldn’t find them.

“I thought ‘Oh no, my teeth fell into my stomach.’”