From Tiffany earrings to mobile phones – this is what happens when you swallow something you shouldn’t

A man in Florida recently visited a Tiffany & Co jewellery store posing as a buyer for a professional US athlete. While viewing the items, together worth well over £1 million, the thief tried to grab them and run from the store.

The ensuing struggle saw one diamond ring get dropped – but the thief still made off with two pairs of diamond earrings valued at £600,000. In a bid to avoid arrest, the suspect consumed a different kind of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” – swallowing the jewellery. After he was later taken into custody some 340 miles away, he was quoted as saying: “Am I going to be charged for what is in my stomach?”

This certainly isn’t the first time a thief has hoped that swallowing stolen valuables would help them get away with their crime. One of the UK’s most notorious jewel thieves, whose exploits were captured in the ITV series Joan, also consumed jewels in order to steal them.

But while in this recent instance the stolen jewels were recovered after naturally passing through the thief’s body, this isn’t always the case when things are swallowed that shouldn’t be. Foreign body ingestion, as it’s called, accounts for approximately 1,500 deaths per year in the US alone.

Although most of the time, ingested foreign bodies pass naturally, around 10-20% of cases require endoscopic retrieval (a camera and small tools entering your mouth to get to your stomach) – and 1% require emergency surgery. In adults, the most commonly ingested foreign bodies are fish or chicken bones. In children, it’s coins, button batteries and toy parts.

Small items, such as earrings, aren’t too difficult for the body to pass if swallowed accidentally or on purpose. This is because the oesophagus, which carries food to the stomach, is up to 3cm in diameter.

Read more: Weird and wonderful things lost then found inside the human body

But if objects are too large and get stuck in the oesophagus, they can tear and perforate it. A tear to the oesophagus requires immediate medical intervention – without emergency care, this tear has a mortality rate of up to 40%.

The stomach, a J-shaped sac, has a much larger diameter than the oesophagus. It then connects to the small intestines and subsequently the large intestines. But because of the stomach’s unique shape and the way it tightly narrows as it joins the small intestines, objects can easily get lodged in this join.

In one case study, doctors in Iran removed more than 450 metallic items from a man’s stomach – including screws, keys, nuts and other metal parts. These objects weren’t able to pass naturally due to the narrowing of the digestive tract – subsequently building up in the stomach, leading to abdominal pains and digestive issues in the patient that required immediate surgery.

Just as problematic are prisoners who swallow mobile phones, as these are too large to progress beyond the stomach, so they get stuck. The only way to remove the phone in these instances is by endoscopy or surgery – which is what had to happen when a prisoner in India swallowed four mobile phones.

If the phone isn’t removed, the stomach’s acid may dissolve many of the phone’s components. This could potentially expose its battery, which contains chemicals that can burn the stomach lining or cause it to rupture.

Should an item manage to pass through the stomach, it then has to move through 12 feet of small intestines before entering the large intestines. The appendix is located where these intestines meet – and any foreign objects that enter this tube are unlikely to get back out the way they came. So, this is another site where items can easily become stuck, causing infection and the need for emergency surgical removal.

In one rare case, a diamond earring caused appendicitis in a person who had swallowed it by accident. There are also cases of this happening after screws, stones and pins became lodged in the appendix.

The large intestines, where faeces begin to form, gradually begin to narrow in diameter, especially near the rectum. This makes it even more likely that the intestinal wall may be perforated by foreign objects – particularly sharp things such as the post of an earring or even packets of smuggled drugs.

Perforation of the bowel anywhere through the gastrointestinal tract is a surgical emergency, as it means the contents of the tract – which includes billions of bacteria – can leak into the membrane that lines your pelvis and abdomen. This can cause serious and often fatal infections such as peritonitis and sepsis, which can have mortality rates of almost 50%.

Spare a thought

Putting anything that isn’t food or drink into your body carries a significant risk of getting stuck, tearing through delicate walls of the digestive tract, or reacting with the lining in a way that damages your intestines.

As ever in these cases, spare a thought for the poor person who has to “check through what came out” – or the person who had to clean the recovered jewellery.

Read more: Whether inserted, ingested or implanted, batteries are a matter of life and death

The good news for thieves who are desperate enough to try this route of “acquisition” is that valuable metals such as gold, silver and many of the precious stones embedded in them don’t change when touched by stomach acid.

However, it’s hard to say whether these particular Tiffany earrings will go up or down in value, given the journey they’ve endured.

Adam Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.