A 31-year-old Connecticut woman develops a giant ulcer in her rectum after eating too many sunflower seeds
A Connecticut woman developed a massive ulcer in her rectum that affects only one in 20,000 people after eating “excessive” amounts of sunflower seeds.
The unnamed woman, 31, sought medical attention after losing 20 pounds in a month and experiencing severe diarrhea.
When doctors performed scans of her abdomen and pelvis, they discovered that there was an undigested sunflower seed in her rectum.
The woman had developed a rectal seminal bezoars – an extremely rare hard mass.
Bezoars are extremely rare collections of partially digested or undigested materials that become trapped in the gastrointestinal tract.
This happens when the foreign material builds up in the colon and rectum, causing it to dry out and harden. This leads to masses, impacted stools, and anal pain.
Sunflower seeds are the second most common cause of seed bezoars. The main cause is watermelon seeds
Most of these are trapped in the stomach or small intestine.
Bezoars often don’t cause symptoms, but in this woman’s case, she experienced bowel movement, rectal pain, and constipation.
The medical team said it was probably from eating ‘excessive’ amounts of sunflower seeds. It’s unclear exactly how much she ate.
The unnamed woman developed a rectal bezoar after eating “excessive” amounts of sunflower seeds. It’s unclear exactly how much she ate
Only two or three cases of bezoars are reported each year. Sunflower seed bezoars are also more common in children who eat the seeds with the shells still attached.
Watermelon seeds are the most common cause of bezoars, followed by sunflower seeds.
A review of 52 studies published in the journal Curious found that 72 percent of bezoar cases from 1980 to 2018 originated in Eastern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries.
The researchers suggested this could be because these countries have diets rich in fruits and vegetables, many of which contain seeds.
A 2018 review in the Pan African Medical Journal describes the case of a 64-year-old Greek man who also developed a rectal bezoar from eating “large amounts of unshelled sunflower seeds in the past week.”
He had to be placed under general anesthesia and had his stool removed manually to remove the mass.
In addition, a report appeared in the journal last year Frontiers in surgery discussed the case of a 50-year-old Italian man who ate two bags of pumpkin seeds with the husks. He had rectal bleeding and difficulty passing stool.
His colon was rinsed out to remove the bezoar.
In the case of the Connecticut woman, she was put under anesthesia for a colonoscopy to remove the mass.
Doctors reported that she was put on a high-fiber diet to prevent constipation and told her not to eat sunflower seeds in the future.
The findings were published in the journal Curious.