Correspondence
A Gastric “Bee-Zoar”
N Engl J Med 1997; 336:1763-1764June 12, 1997
- Article
To the Editor:
A 40-year-old woman presented to our emergency department with acute throat discomfort. She had been thirsty and described having taken a long, deep swallow from a soft-drink can. She felt a sudden pain in her oropharynx and assumed that she had swallowed the drinking straw. When the pain persisted, she sought medical advice.
On examination, the patient appeared comfortable. Her vital signs were normal, and the physical examination was unremarkable. The oropharynx was entirely normal. An inspection of the pharynx with a nasopharyngeal laryngoscope revealed no abnormalities.
We performed an upper endoscopy to locate and retrieve the presumptive straw. No drinking straw was to be found in the esophagus, stomach, or duodenum. However, in the body of the stomach we discovered a bee (Figure 1Figure 1
Endoscopic View of the Bee in the Patient's Stomach.), dead but completely intact.It appears that the patient had unwittingly swallowed the bee as she took a swallow of soda from the can. The pain in her throat may have been due to a bee sting. A review of the literature found only a single mention of bee ingestion.1 When found in the stomach, this particular foreign body might be called a “bee-zoar.”
1 ReferencesJohn P. Lynch, M.D., Ph.D.
Robin D. Rothstein, M.D.
University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA 191041
Girardi A . The bee: an unusual gastric foreign body. Endoscopy 1990;22:240-240
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