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What appeared at first to be an unidentified mass turned out to be a sizable piece of chicken bone.
By Shula Rosen
Chicken soup has long been the unofficial prescription for winter coughs, but one Jerusalem man learned that even the most comforting bowl can take a dangerous turn.
Physicians at Shaare Zedek Medical Center say a chicken bone lurking in his soup—not the illness it was meant to soothe—triggered a medical crisis that nearly cost him his life.
The man, in his 50s, arrived at the hospital after weeks of relentless coughing and a stubborn lung infection that refused to clear up, despite multiple rounds of medication, Arutz Sheva reports.
Emergency department staff noted pronounced inflammation and breathing difficulties and referred him to the pulmonology service for more extensive evaluation.
Specialists began ruling out common causes, but the tests pointed them toward something far more unusual.
When the team performed a bronchoscopy, Dr. Nader Abdel, who heads the hospital’s bronchoscopy unit, discovered that the airway to the patient’s right lung was sealed shut by an unexpected obstruction.
What appeared at first to be an unidentified mass turned out to be a sizable piece of chicken bone.
“We were surprised to find a large bone fragment stuck in the lung that caused a localized infection with surrounding tissue that increased the blockage,” Dr. Abdel told Arutz Sheva. “The body produces, as a natural reaction, a kind of sheath around the foreign object. The man was certainly in danger of death and could have, God forbid, even died.”
The patient recalled how severe the coughing became. “For a long time I suffered from a very strong cough that almost made me choke. I could no longer tolerate it,” he said.
He added that although he was nervous about the procedure, “it was a short procedure, and I trusted the doctors and nurses a great deal. I cannot believe that a bone entered my lung.”
His wife said she had never heard him cough so violently and praised the staff for refusing to release him until they solved the mystery. “Thanks to their excellent work he no longer coughs and feels great,” she said.
Dr. Abdel noted that his team has recently seen more adults unknowingly aspirate objects. “Contrary to the impression that only children swallow objects into their lungs, there are many cases of adults… some without their knowing at all that they had something in their lungs,” he said.
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