Elderly Man Swallows Dentures While Stuffing His Face With Pancakes

Hunger can be a dicey thing—it pushes one to surrender to its capricious nature. In a rather bizarre incident, a senior citizen in China accidentally swallowed dentures while devouring pancakes!

“I ate two buns, then I wanted to eat a pancake,” Mr. Shang said, to a news outlet. “While eating pancake, I couldn’t find my dentures. I needed my teeth to eat the pancake but I couldn’t find them. I thought ‘Oh no. My teeth fell into my stomach,” he added.

While the incident might come off as ridiculously absurd, it turns out that the man’s assumptions were indeed true. Doctors at the Jinan Central Hospital in China discovered the dentures with a gastroscope. It was a tense moment, as the dentures were already inside the patient’s stomach. The examination shed light on Shang’s three false teeth, which were attached to a metal plate and had sharp hooks on either side. The teeth had to come out of the 80-year-old’s system at all costs, but finding a way was a challenge for Dr. Zhu Jingyu, the hospital’s head gastroenterologist. Adequate measures had to be taken to ensure that further abrasions weren’t caused to his stomach and esophagus.

“Especially his esophagus, because of three sections which were particularly narrow,” said Dr. Jingyu. “In the end, we tried several transparent caps and protective tubs, adjusted the angels and finally removed the false teeth from his stomach,” he added.

The risky procedure took about two hours. Not much has been divulged about Shang's health, as he is yet to make a complete recovery. The population of the elderly is roughly around 128 million in China.