Doctors remove cell phone from prisoner’s stomach in Kosovo

INQUIRER.net stock photo

PRISTINA — A Kosovo surgeon said Tuesday he had successfully removed a mobile phone from the stomach of a prisoner four days after he had swallowed the entire device.

The 33-year-old man, whose identity was not revealed, was admitted to the Pristina university hospital gastroenterology clinic last week after complaining of stomach pain for several days.

The doctors realized that he had swallowed a small phone and managed to take it out, Skender Telaku, who led the medical team that performed the intervention, told AFP.

“By endoscopic means, so without cutting the stomach, we took out the phone divided into three parts,” he told AFP.

The patient told the doctors that the phone was in his stomach for four days.

The procedure, which lasted more than two hours, was performed without complications, Telaku said.

“It was the battery that concerned us the most …. the corrosive battery acid could have leaked into his stomach,” he added.

“It was like walking in a minefield but luckily everything went smoothly.”

Police then took with them both the patient and the mobile phone, a model from the early 2000s.

It was not clear yet how or why the man had swallowed the phone.

The medical team believes that the device was smuggled into the prison where he was serving his sentence to be used illegally to contact the outside world.

Police neither confirmed nor commented on the incident.