DOCTORS were shocked to find a man had been living with a knife lodged in his chest for eight years after he complained of sore nipples.

The 44-year-old took himself to hospital in Tanzania complaining of pussy discharge oozing from below his right nipple.

Medics were baffled by the cause because he had no other symptoms.

The unnamed patient reported no chest pain, breathing difficulties, cough or fever – and his vital signs were normal.

Doctors were stumped – until the man told them about an incident that took place nearly a decade ago.

He revealed he had ben slashed on his face, back, chest and stomach during “violent altercation”, though received treatment from doctors at the time.

Life since had been “uneventful”, according to the patient, until he noticed the pus.

Incredibly, a chest radiograph found the cause of his problems – a large knife blade lodged inside his chest.

Doctors could see the knife had been sunk in through his right shoulder blade and miraculously dodged any major organs.

Surgeons carefully extracted the blade during an operation when they also drained the pus, which has been caused by dead tissue.

The man stayed in intensive care for 24 hours and was then transferred to the general ward for 10 days while doctors monitored his condition.

The gobsmacking case was reported by the Journal of Surgical Case Reports last month.

It says that the patient was treated at Muhimbili National Hospital in Tanzania, and that he recovered well with “uneventful” follow-up appointments.

Surgeons in Vietnam were forced to remove another very unusual object from a patient.

A man somehow ended up with an eel up his bum, and was in serious pain when it began to gnaw its way out of his digestive tract.

Disturbed medics discovered the 26-inch long eel in X-ray scans taken to diagnose the cause of his pain on July 27, according to local media.

They found the eel had attempted to chew its way to freedom by biting through the wall of his large intestine.

Initial attempts to remove the snake-like fish with a probe through his anus were thwarted when medics at Viet Duc Hospital, in Hanoi, found a lemon stuffed up there too.

Surgeons were forced to cut through his abdomen to remove the eel with forceps.

Then they manipulated the lemon back down through the patient’s anus until it popped out before stitching up the hole in his intestine and cleaning out leaked faecal matter.

Medics say he would have died without treatment and will have to live with a stoma bag for the rest of his life.

Hospital officials have not named the patient and only identified him as a 31-year-old Indian national.

Hospital Deputy Director of the Center for Colon and Rectal Surgery Dr Le Nhat Huy said they had performed many surgeries to remove foreign objects from patients’ anuses.