59-year-old man has colonoscopy, doctors discover insect inside colon

A procedure that is uncomfortable, but can be life-saving, is a colonoscopy, but it's not everyday doctors manage to find an insect inside someone's colon.

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Gastroenterologists Keith Siau of The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust found something "particularly eye-catching" inside a 59-year-old man's colon. A colonoscopy is a procedure where a camera is placed in the colon of a man to check for any health abnormalities inside of the large intestine, and while the procedure is uncomfortable for many, it can "sometimes be life-saving" if a health abnormality is found before it becomes life-threatening.

Before a colonoscopy is conducted, doctors tell patients not to eat anything 24 hours before the procedure and to drink 1 gallon of polyethylene glycol, an osmotic laxative used to treat constipation, during the evening of the day before the colonoscopy. Researchers suspect that the colonoscopy preparation may have assisted the ladybug in escaping from digestive enzymes.

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The authors wrote the following, "The patient's colonoscopy preparation was 1 gallon of polyethylene glycol the evening before colonoscopy, and the colonoscopy examination was otherwise normal. His colonoscopy preparation may have helped the bug to escape from digestive enzymes in the stomach and upper small intestine."

So, how did the ladybug get there? Authors suspect that the ladybug likely climbed inside while the man was asleep, "bug ingestions are rarely reported but can occur even during sleep."

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