A 62-year-old man, who told doctors that for 20 years he had a frequent urge to urinate, was found to have a giant lump in his stomach that resembled a large boiled egg.
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The lump was found to have been pressing on his bladder, which gave him the sensation of having to go to the toilet.
The New England Journal of Medicine reported in its latest edition that the physical examination and laboratory findings were described as "unremarkable".
However, a laparoscopy located a "free-floating, smooth, firm, rubbery mass", which measured 10 by 9.5 centimetres and weighed 200 grams.
The lump looks remarkably like a boiled egg and, when it was removed, the man said he did not feel the need to make a trip to the loo as often as he had in the previous two decades.
"The findings were consistent with a peritoneal loose body, a formation that is thought to result from torsed, infarcted, and detached epiploic appendages that transform into fibrotic masses," US doctors Rachael Sussman and Jonah Murdock reported in the journal.
"Such masses are often asymptomatic when they are small, but they can be large enough to cause extrinsic compression that is associated with bowel obstruction, urinary retention, or [as in this patient] urinary frequency."
The journal said in another report that any lump larger than five centimetres wide was rare, with very few cases reported in medical history.
Fairfax Media
