Skender Telaku, 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.
After complaining of stomach ache for several days, the 33-year-old male was hospitalized to the Pristina university hospital gastrointestinal department last week.
Skender Telaku, who headed the medical team that performed the intervention, said the physicians discovered he had swallowed a little phone and were able to extract it.
“We took out the phone separated into three segments by endoscopic techniques, therefore without cutting the stomach.” he told AFP.
Adding that the patient said 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.