(IntegrityPress.org) – Doctors were surprised earlier this month when they located a dead fly inside the intestinal tract of a 63-year-old man who went in for a routine colonoscopy in Missouri.
The man said he’d followed the protocol and only consumed liquids the day prior. The man also confirmed he had not consumed any flies to the best of his knowledge in the days beforehand either.
Colonoscopies require an extreme amount of preparation which should have thoroughly emptied the man’s bowels. The preparatory solution must be consumed over a period of hours the day before the procedure to clear the digestive tract so the scope is able to examine the interior tissues with a light and camera.
Chief of Gastroenterology at the University of Missouri, Matthew Bechtold, told The Independent that the fly was dead upon discovery and removed from the man. He said it was somewhat of a mystery how the fly ended up there intact.
Pictures of the fly inside the man were published with the story.
Bechtold said that the fly was not partially digested, suggesting it had flown into the man’s anus at some point which also seems unlikely. He said an opening would have had to have been created for an extended period of time for the fly to enter and find its way to the middle colon without any light in a curvy tunnel. The appearance of the fly poses a curious mystery.
In the past, there have been rare cases of insects showing up after the person ingested eggs or larvae but typically they don’t survive digestion. Larvae surviving the digestive tract in patients typically cause diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal cramps.
CDC doesn’t keep records for specific cases of intestinal myiasis, the technical term for larvae in stool. However, it did relay a tale of a one-year-old child who passed moving worms after eating a bad banana.
Doctors told parents to cover their fruit instead of allowing flies to land on it.
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