The Daily Mail reported Wednesday that doctors of Nermin Keating, a 75-year old woman with Parkinson's disease, failed to notice four times she had dentures stuck in her throat, leaving them lodged there for nine weeks.
Keating's daughter, Umit Maddock, 46, realized her mother, had lost her dentures around the same time she began feeling ill, BBC News reported. Maddock took the 75-year-old to the hospital and mentioned the missing teeth.
"She was diagnosed as having a lung infection and given antibiotics," Maddock told BBC News. "They didn't take much notice of her throat." However, doctors assured her that it would be impossible for Keating to swallow her dentures, which contained 11 teeth.
When Keating's high temperature persisted, Maddock brought her mother to another doctor at Mount Chambers Surgery a week later. The dentures again went unnoticed. Maddock couldn't remember if she mentioned the missing teeth, but said "her throat wasn't checked." A doctor prescribed more antibiotics.
But medications did not help. "It still wasn't getting better," Maddock said. "When I was feeding her she was making funny noises and almost choking."
A few weeks later, a desperate Maddock and Keating made one final doctor trip. When Dr. Noel Pereira examined Keating, he looked down her throat. "The teeth were there," Maddock said.
They were removed with forceps in Chelmsford’s Broomfield Hospital.
Mrs Maddock said: ‘It’s a miracle mum even survived for so long. I can’t quite believe what has happened, I was just so relieved when they came out.’
Surgery manager Peter Hadfield called it ‘an extraordinary find – very unusual’.
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