The case of a Missouri man who reportedly had a fly in his colon caused doctors to reveal other insects they had found during colonoscopies, which included a ladybug and a roach.
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The 63-year-old patient went to his routine colon cancer screening, and doctors discovered the fly in his colon while moving a camera to the transverse colon, the area on top of the large intestine, as reported by the Daily Mail. Doctors were stunned by the discovery but believed it could’ve been from the contaminated lettuce that the man ate a day before his appointment. “This case represents a very rare colonoscopic finding [It is a] mystery on how the intact fly found its way to the transverse colon,” doctors wrote in the American Journal of Gastroenterology.
After this discovery, several doctors revealed other insects they found while performing colonoscopies. There was a 2010 case of a 52-year-old woman who had a roach infestation in her home, and during her colorectal cancer screening, doctors found a cockroach in her large intestine. Doctors said the roach’s hard outer shell was most likely resistant to stomach acid after the woman unknowingly ate it when it got into her food.
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There was another case of a cockroach being found in a 51-year-old woman’s colon in that same year, and it was found stuck to a green substance, which doctors believe could’ve been jello. Although they tried to remove it, it disintegrated. A moth was found in a 55-year-old man’s colon in Tampa, Florida, in 2013, and an Oregon man found a dead ant in his colon two days after eating potato salad and chicken wings at a family picnic in 2009.
Other than accidentally swallowing insects, there are different ways that insects can end up in colons, such as crawling up someone’s rectum. This is rare unless the person has a medical condition that makes it difficult to control their sphincter muscles. In most cases, insects in the colon will pass through the digestive system without causing problems. However, in some cases, insects can cause irritation, infection, or even blockage of the intestines.