By Lhowrence Asis

PHOTO: Agence France-Presse

A Kosovo surgeon had successfully removed a mobile phone from the stomach of a prisoner four days after he had ingested the entire device.

Skender Telaku, the gastroenterologist who led the medical team that performed the operation told AFP on Tuesday, September 7, that the two-hour surgery was a complete success. 

“By endoscopic means, so without cutting the stomach, we took out the phone divided into three parts,” Telaku said.

According to the doctors at the Pristina University Hospital, when the 33-year old man was admitted, the said prisoner had been complaining of stomach pain several days prior to his admission.

Upon operation, the doctors found out that he had swallowed a Nokia 3310 phone, a model originally released in the 2000s.

But what concerned Telaku and his team the most was the battery from the phone and the "potential leakage of corrosive acid" into the man's stomach.

“It was like walking in a minefield but luckily everything went smoothly," Telaku said. 

The police then took both the patient and the mobile phone. 

It is still unclear on how or why the prisoner swallowed the entire device but the medical team  suspected that the man smuggled the mobile phone into the prison to illegally contact the outside world.

Police have not yet commented on the incident.


Report sources: PhilStar Life, Euro News