Unusual X-rays: From ingested phones to gold needles

A chest x-ray shows the chainsaw that was embedded in James Valentine's neck and shoulder, courtesy of the Allegheny Health Network, received April 1, 2014. Valentine, 21, was part of a crew pruning trees on Monday afternoon when his saw suddenly kicked back and the blade sliced into him. His co-workers brought him down from the tree and he was taken to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. REUTERS/Allegheny Health Network/Handout via Reuters (UNITED STATES - Tags: DISASTER HEALTH) NO SALES. NO ARCHIVES. FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS. MANDATORY CREDIT. ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. REUTERS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE AUTHENTICITY, CONTENT, LOCATION OR DATE OF THIS IMAGE. THIS PICTURE IS DISTRIBUTED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED BY REUTERS, AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS

When doctors examined an X-ray image of the knees of a woman experiencing severe joint pain, they found a gold mine: hundreds of tiny gold acupuncture needles left in her tissue.

The 65-year-old South Korean woman had previously been diagnosed with osteoarthritis, a condition in which the cartilage and bones within the joints degrade, causing pain and stiffness. But when pain relievers and anti-inflammatory drugs didn't alleviate the pain in her knees and only caused stomach discomfort, she had turned to acupuncture, the doctors wrote last week in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Acupuncture is an alternative medical practice that uses needles to purportedly stimulate certain points on the body, to alleviate pain or to treat various diseases.

Credit: The New England Journal of Medicine ©2013.

An X-ray showing a 17centimeter (6.7 inches) pair of surgical scissors in the abdomen of 69-year-old Pat Skinner in Sydney, Australia, Tuesday, April 20, 2004. Mrs Skinner had an operation at St.George hospital in Sydney's south in May 2001, but continued to suffer intense pain and it was only when she insisted on an x-ray 18 months later that she discovered the scissors inside. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith)

Chicago's Dante Autullo unknowingly shot a nail into his skull and posted a picture of the X-ray on Facebook during his ambulance ride between hospitals for surgery. Autullo underwent surgery to remove the 3-1/4-inch nail lodged in his brain and is recovering.(AP Photo/Christ Medical Center & Hope Children's Hospital)

An X-ray showing a spear that has pierced through the head of 16-year-old Yasser Lopez is seen in this handout photo from Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida provided to Reuters June 19, 2012. Lopez was spear fishing with a friend when he was accidentally shot in the head. The spear entered just above his right eye, and penetrated through his brain to the back of his skull. Miraculously, no vital brain structures were damaged by the harpoon, and Lopez is now recovering from the incident. REUTERS/Jackson Memorial Hospital/Handout

An X-ray showing a spear that has pierced through the head of 16-year-old Yasser Lopez is seen in this handout photo from Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida provided to Reuters June 19, 2012. Lopez was spear fishing with a friend when he was accidentally shot in the head. The spear entered just above his right eye, and penetrated through his brain to the back of his skull. Miraculously, no vital brain structures were damaged by the harpoon, and Lopez is now recovering from the incident. REUTERS/Jackson Memorial Hospital/Handout

Safdar Ali Shah, 36, displays his medical X-ray sheet with a scissor in his lower abdomen outside the Karachi Press Club April 9, 2012. Shah said he went to a hospital on April 7, 2012 for a medical checkup due to continued pain in his abdomen, and was shocked when doctors identified that he has a scissor in his abdomen which was left by a medical team who performed his operation back in 2000. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

The X-ray picture shows a 5-centimeter nail stuck in an unidentified South Korean patient's skull Thursday, Dec. 2, 2004. According to a Seoul hospital, doctors found the nail after the man came to the hospital, complaining about a severe headache. They speculate that the nail stuck in the man's head four years ago in an accident but the man didn't know about it. The nail was removed in a surgery last Saturday. (AP Photo/Yonhap).

This X-ray released by New York's Montefiore Medical Center, Monday, July 16, 2007, shows a screw that was inserted in the broken neck of Paul Robinson, of Kirkland, Wash. Robinson, 53, was in the steep upper deck of Yankee Stadium with his wife and son July 8, 2007, when an unidentified man above him fell down several rows of seats, breaking Robinson's vertebra. (AP Photo/Montefiore Medical Center)

Six nails embedded in the skull of construction worker Isidro Mejia, 39, after an industrial incident caused a nail gun to shoot nails into his head and brain on April 19, 2004, are seen in this X-ray image from Providence Holy Cross Hospital in Los Angeles. Five of the six nails were removed in surgery that day and the sixth was removed from his face on April 23, after the swelling went down. (AP Photo/photo released by Providence Holy Cross Medical Center)

In this undated Metropolitan Police handout, x-ray images show how a teenage boy cheated death when a five inch knife was plunged into his head. The 16-year-old and two other young men were injured when they tried to stop a friend being robbed at a bus stop. He was rushed to hospital with the kitchen knife still stuck in his forehead after the attack in Walworth, south London, last November. (AP Photo/ Metropolitan Police, HO)

This photo taken aug. 6, 2011 and released Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2011 by the Cicero Police Department shows an x-ray revealing a diamond ring inside Wilfredo Gonzalez-Cruz, 30, of Chicago, that he allegedly stole from the home of a women in Cicero, Ill., and then and swallowed. Gonzalez was arrested Friday, aug. 5 and authorities recovered the ring after waiting for it to complete its journey through his body. (AP Photo/Cicero Police Department)

In this undated photo released by the New South Wales Police on Friday, April 24, 2009, an X-ray image of the skull of Chinese man Chen Liu is shown. Liu's badly decomposed body was found in marshland in Sydney's south, Nov. 1 2008, after being shot repeatedly in the head with a high-powered nail gun. (AP Photo/New South Wales Police, HO)

An undated X-ray shows steel balls and magnets inside of 8-year-old Haley Lents, after the Huntingburg, Ind. child swallowed the pieces from a magnetic toy set on May 8, 2008. The child required emergency surgery and was hospitalized for two weeks. (AP Photo/The Jaspaar Herald)

This image provide by the University Medical Center in Tucson, Arizona shows the x-ray of an 86 year-old man, Leroy Luetscher, who was accidentally impaled through his eye socket with pruning shears at his home on July 30, 2011. While working in his yard, Luetscher dropped a pair of pruning shears, which landed in the ground point-side down. When Mr. Luetscher went to pick up the shears, he lost his balance and fell face-down on the handle. The shears handle penetrated his eye socket underneath his eye and went down into his neck. Mr. Luetscher was taken by ambulance to University Medical Center’s Level 1 Trauma Center. University of Arizona surgeons, including trauma surgeon Julie Wynne, MD, oculoplastic specialist Lynn Polonski, MD, and vascular surgeon Kay Goshima, MD, were able to remove the shears, rebuild his orbital floor with metal mesh, and save his eye. AFP PHOTO / HO / University Medical Center

A doctor displays an X-ray of Mohammad Yusuf's stomach that shows a liquor bottle, in Patna, India, Thursday, June 7, 2007. Robbers accosted Yusuf, 30, and shoved the bottle up his rectum when he resisted. The bottle was successfully removed through surgery Thursday. (AP Photo/A.P.Dube, Hindustan Times)

This image provided by the Direction of Penal Centers of El Salvador shows an x-ray taken of one of four prisoners at a maximum security Salvadoran prison in Zacatecoluca, 35 miles southeast of the capital of El Salvador. Four cellular telephones were found in the intestines of as many prisoners in El Salvador's maximum-security prison, authorities said Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2006. The discovery happened Tuesday at the prison in Zacatecoluca after suspicious prison officials took x-rays of each of the prisoners, prison spokesman Jaime Villanova said. (AP Photo/Centros Penales)

In this undated photo, an X-ray image of Chinese woman, Luo Cuifen, 29, released by Richland International Hospital, needles are seen in her body. Chinese surgeons planned to begin removing 23 needles from Luo, possibly imbedded under her skin by grandparents trying to kill her so that a baby boy might take her place, a hospital spokesman said Monday, Sept. 10, 2007. In many parts of China, baby boys are still heavily favored over girls because they are bound by tradition to support their parents in their old age, and because they carry on the family name. (AP Photo/Richland International Hospital, HO)

A x-ray made on February 13, 2011 in Lyon, shows a pair of surgical pliers in the abdomen of Anne, a women who complained of abdominal pain after a surgery. Six months after her surgical operation, Anne realized she had a pair of surgical pliers which had been forgotten in her womb, when the point of the pliers pierced her navel following a "good fit of coughing" on last February 11. AFP PHOTO

An X-ray of Michael Hill, of Jacksonville, Fla., with an eight inch knife sticking out of his skull is on display during the grand opening celebration of Ripley's Believe It Or Not Odditorium Thursday, June 21, 2007 in New York's Times Square. Ripley's Times Square site will house the ultimate in the odd and bizarre including 24 shrunken heads, a 3,197 lb meteorite and a section of the Berlin Wall. (AP Photo/ Ripley's Believe It Or Not)

An X-ray of an four foot long pine snake who swallowed a couple of light bulbs is on display during the grand opening of Ripley's Believe It Or Not Odditorium Thursday, June 21, 2007 in New York's Times Square. (AP Photo/ Ripley's Believe It Or Not)

A pre-surgery X-ray of Houdini, a 12-foot (3.6-meter) Burmese python that swallowed an entire electric blanket _ with the electrical cord and control box, is shown in Ketchum, Idaho, Wednesday, July 19, 2006. It took surgery on Tuesday, July 18, 2006, to save the python after it swallowed the electric blanket _ with the electrical cord and control box. This X-ray shows some of the tangle of the blanket's wiring and mechanism in the python. (AP Photo/Dev Khalsa)

An X-ray showing a spear through the head of 16-year-old Yasser Lopez is pictured in this handout photo from Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida provided to Reuters June 19, 2012. Lopez was spear fishing with a friend when he was accidentally shot in the head. The spear entered just above his right eye, and penetrated through his brain to the back of his skull. Miraculously, no vital brain structures were damaged by the harpoon, and Lopez is now recovering from the incident. REUTERS/Jackson Memorial Hospital/Handout