Retained surgical foreign bodies are unanticipated events culminating from inadvertent operating room errors and may cause severe medical and legal problems between the patient and the doctor. Here, we report detecting a surgical instrument fragment 13 years after an open abdominal hysterectomy in a quadragenarian during her evaluation of a month-old complaint of lower abdominal and right thigh pain. A computed tomography scan of the abdomen demonstrated a radio-opaque linear foreign body traversing the right obturator foramen with extension into the pelvis cranially and the adductor compartment of the right thigh caudally. The metallic foreign body, identified as a fragmented handle of a uterine tenaculum forceps with a slender sharp-tip hook, could be removed laparoscopically from the pelvis after a diagnostic laparoscopy, preventing significant complications. The minimally invasive approach enabled a smooth recovery, and the patient could go home on the second postoperative day.

Written informed consent was obtained from the patient for her anonymized information and images to be published in this article.

We wrote this case report in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and the Institutional Ethical Committee of All India Institute of Medical Sciences Rishikesh.

D.R. and S.S. drafted the case report. All authors were involved in the management of the patient and in the conception of the manuscript. All authors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript being submitted and that all authors fulfill the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) requirements for authorship.

None.

Received: 26 September 2021

Accepted: 06 December 2022

Article published online:
02 March 2023

© 2023. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction so long as the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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