An elderly woman from South Korea came to the hospital complaining of pain in her legs. Doctors X-rayed her and were shocked to find hundreds of gold needles left behind after acupuncture treatments.
The 65-year-old resident of South Korea had been treated for arthritis for a long time. She decided to resort to acupuncture, as the traditional anti-inflammatory drugs did not bring her any relief. However, acupuncture, apparently, did not produce that effect, so the woman came to the hospital.
Local doctors were surprised when X-ray showed a huge amount of needles in the woman’s knees. Experts believe that acupuncture masters left these needles intentionally, as they believed it would provide a “continuous stimulation”. Meanwhile, such a practice is extremely dangerous, since foreign objects in the body can cause edema, infection, and abscesses, if not installed according to all the rules. In addition, foreign objects impede the normal interpretation of radiographs.
South Korean doctors carefully and gently removed the needles from the woman’s knees, so that she could undergo the treatment for arthritis with the newly selected medicines. The patient suffers from the most common form of arthritis – osteoarthritis, characterized by the inflammation of the joints, articular cartilage damage and bone growth around the surface of the joints. The pain occurs due to damage of the cartilage, which is like a gasket between the bones. Without this gasket, the joint bones rub against each other during the motion, and that creates a very unpleasant feeling.
