4,000 Americans are hospitalized each year with a ‘foreign object’ stuck up their bum, study finds

Nearly 4,000 people are hospitalized with foreign objects in their rectum each year, according to a new study published in The American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

According to the study, many of the stuck items are s*xual objects. 

Researchers at the University of Rochester in New York were stumped by the “little epidemiologic information on this condition,” so they decided to analyze emergency reports from 2012 to 2021.

The study — said to be the first “nationally representative data” on rectal foreign bodies in the US — found 38,948 emergency department visits based on 885 cases in this period among people older than 15. 

Researchers scoured the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System for injuries involving the “pubic region” or “lower trunk,” with “an accompanying diagnosis of foreign body, puncture, or laceration.”

The system keeps a record of injuries related to consumer products, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. 

Of these reported cases, the average age of the patient visiting the emergency room was 43 years old. 

Nearly 78% of the patients were male, and 40% of these patients required hospitalization. 

Over half of the foreign bodies were sexual objects, which could be items like vibrators, anal beads or other toys. Balls and marbles, as well as drugs, were associated with a lower rate of hospitalization.

Researchers also found an increase in hospital visits for rectal foreign items over the time span they studied, rising from 1.2 per 100,000 persons in 2012 to 1.9 in 2021. 

“These data quantify a frequently encountered clinical presentation that has received little research focus,” the study’s authors wrote. “These data suggest that there are distinct sex and age-specific differences in outcomes that may have an anatomic or behavioural basis.”

In April, the Visual Journal of Emergency Surgery reported that a man had to be rushed into emergency surgery after getting a can of deodorant stuck in his butt. And last year, a French senior citizen left doctors shocked when he arrived with a World War I artillery shell lodged in his rectum. It caused the hospital to be partially evacuated over bomb scare concerns.