Ali Ihsan Okten, Mehmet Adam, Yurdal Gezercan


October 2006, Volume 15, Issue 5, pp 626 - 629 Case Report Read Full Article 10.1007/s00586-006-0136-6

First Online: 31 May 2006

Items such as cotton or gauze pads can be mistakenly left behind during operations. Such foreign materials (called textilomas or gossypibomas) cause foreign body reaction in the surrounding tissue. The complications caused by these foreign bodies are well known, but cases are rarely published because of medico-legal implications. Some textilomas cause infection or abscess formation in the early stage, whereas others remain clinically silent for many years. Here, we describe a case of textiloma in which the patient presented with low-back pain 4 years after lumbar discectomy. Imaging revealed an abcess-like mass in the lumbar epidural space.


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