Woman nearly dies after swallowing 30cm-long kitchen spatula

A Chinese woman nearly died after she put a 30cm kitchen spatula in her mouth to try and clear her throat.

Guan Hsuing, 31, said she had been cooking a new recipe that involved exotic herbs and spices, when she suddenly felt her throat starting to swell up in an allergic reaction.

She said: 'I remember some folk remedy saying it helps to use something to unclog the throat,' Ecns.cn reports. 

She first tried to clear her throat with her fingers, followed by three chopsticks, which were all broken.

When that failed, she then decided to use something larger, and put the 30cm long (12 inches) handle of a cooking spatula down her throat.

She became so panicked the utensil became wedged into her throat so tightly she could no longer get it out.

Her daughter, aged four, took her downstairs for help as she struggled to breathe, according to the South China Morning Post. 

After an ambulance was called, she was rushed for treatment at the Kanghua Hospital in Dongguan, in south China's Guangdong Province.

When she turned up, doctors thought they were dealing with somebody suffering from mental health problems.

She was admitted immediately for emergency surgery where doctors managed to extract the cooking utensil.

But they were forced to cut away 20 centimetres (8 inches) of her oesophagus that had been damaged beyond repair.

They then had to stretch her stomach lining in order to make a new connection between her oesophagus and her stomach.

Xiao Pu, a thoracic surgeon at the hospital, told Ecns.com journalists it was a once-in-50-years case, if not 100 years.

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