A surgeon had to remove 63 spoons from a patient's stomach - after he had been eating them for over a year.
Dr Rakesh Khuran performed the two-hour operation on the 32-year-old man in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, India, who remains in intensive care.
The patient was initially admitted to hospital with a severe stomach ache, but doctors were in for a surprise when they examined him.
They initially thought the pain could have been caused by a tumour, but scans showed a cluster of foreign objects.
The surgeons then made incisions in his abdomen and fished out the metal spoons one by one.
In total, the operation took two hours to remove all of them.
“After further inspection, we realised the foreign objects were steel spoons," Dr Khurana told The National.
“There were 63 of them. Never in my career of nearly 35 years have I seen such a case … it is one of the rare medical cases.”
When the doctor asked the patient why there were 63 spoons in his stomach, he said he was forced to ingest them.
The patient's family believe he was fed the spoons whilst undergoing treatment for a drug addiction at a local clinic.
He made the spoon consumption easier on himself by breaking off the oval part and only swallowing the handles.
The doctors believe the patient is not in the "right state of mind" and likely suffering from a psychological condition called pica.
Pica sufferers crave non-food items like coal, metal, clay or dirt.
Dr Khurana added: “No person in their right state of mind would do that. It must be very difficult and painful to swallow the spoons. It is abnormal behaviour."
Last year, doctors in Egypt were stunned when they discovered a patient admitted to hospital with abdominal pains had swallowed an entire mobile phone.
The patient confessed to ingesting the device six months before the scan - but was too embarrassed to seek help at the time.
He hoped the device would naturally leave his body, however it unfortunately became wedged in his stomach.
It blocked food from passing through him properly for half a year and caused life-threatening injuries that needed immediate surgery.
The operation took place at Aswan University Hospital in the city of Aswan, Egypt.
Doctors said they were stunned to discover the mobile phone while treating the man for intestinal and abdominal infections after he turned up complaining of tummy pains.
