A woman with Covid suffered a coughing attack so bad that it caused her intestines to explode out of her stomach.
Doctors at the University of Illinois at Chicago revealed the story in a medical case reportsaying it was the first of its kind.
The 52-year-old woman, who had an incision in her abdomen from a previous surgery, was infected with the virus a few days before the incident.
Repeated coughing led to a ‘spontaneous abdominal evisceration’, when the intense force of his cough created so much pressure that his colon ruptured through the old surgical opening.
Doctors said in a case report that abdominal eviscerations should be considered a risk when performing surgeries on patients who are or become Covid positive (file image)
The patient was rushed to hospital, where doctors observed several centimeters of intestine protruding from her lower left stomach.
They were able to clean out the intestines, place them back inside his body, and close the wound more securely.
While the authors wrote that this complication is rare, they said doctors should consider a patient’s Covid status before performing surgery.
Doctors wrote in the report that the woman had first undergone surgery 13 years earlier to repair a hernia (when an organ protrudes from the muscle or tissue that contains it) in her abdomen.
Shortly afterwards she was imprisoned and over the years had to undergo several repairs to her original operation.
Five days before her strange injury, the woman contracted Covid and suffered from coughing fits.
When he arrived at the hospital after a particularly bad coughing fit, doctors saw that his intestine was protruding from the incision from his previous hernia repair.
The illustration on the left is from a Florida patient’s report and shows how the man’s intestines were protruding through the wound in his abdomen. The illustration on the right shows the man’s incision after doctors repaired his evisceration.
The report’s authors did not provide additional details about the woman’s condition, but wrote that she needed to be resuscitated.
He also received antibiotics to prevent infection of the exposed intestine.
The woman was then taken to the operating room, where doctors examined and washed out the intestine and put it back inside her body.
To close the wound, surgeons used several sutures over multiple layers of fat, tissue and abdominal skin on the woman, including a very strong suturing technique capable of withstanding greater stress on the body.
Surgeons were able to successfully place the woman’s organs back into her body and close the wound again.
The operation was a success and the woman’s bowel function remained intact. There were no further complications and she was sent home after six days in the hospital.
Abdominal evisceration is a rare but serious complication of surgery. It is sometimes called disembowelment and occurs when a patient’s internal organs protrude through an incision due to wound dehiscence, the reopening of a surgical site.
TO study Wound dehiscence is estimated to occur in up to three out of every 100 people who have undergone abdominal and pelvic surgeries, but may occur in up to 10 percent of older patients.
It can be fatal for four out of ten patients due to excessive blood loss, intense and prolonged pain, or injury to organs that have been exposed.
Experts cite cough as a major risk factor for the complication, and the authors of the case report wrote that “postoperative cough is a known risk factor for fascial dehiscence and evisceration,” which has a high mortality rate and is associated with increased future complications.
When wound dehiscence and evisceration occur, they must be treated with surgery to replace the organs in the abdomen and close the open wound.
A sterile saline cover should also be placed over the eviscerations to keep the exposed organs moist until surgery can be performed.
The surgeons added: ‘As new variants of Covid-19 continue to emerge, new clinical presentations of Covid-19 are being observed. Although evisceration is a rare presentation, surgeons should be aware of the possibility and take it into account when performing surgery on patients with Covid-19.
While the case study authors report that this is the first known incident of abdominal evisceration in a Covid-19 patient, a man in Florida recently suffered a similar injury.
Doctors wrote in a case from May 2024 report that the intestines of a man who had recently undergone abdominal surgery were protruding from his incision after he coughed and sneezed at the same time while eating breakfast at a restaurant with his wife.
The 63-year-old man noticed a “wet” sensation followed by a sharp pain. When he lifted his shirt he saw that several centimetres of intestine were protruding from the surgical wound.
He was immediately taken to the operating room, where surgeons successfully returned his intestine to his abdomen.
After recovering in the hospital for six days, the man was sent home and experienced no further complications.