Rio de Janeiro - After a 23-year-long stomach ache, a Brazilian woman finally discovered the cause of her suffering - a scalpel had been left in her stomach.

Local media reports said on Monday that a knife had been found in Maria Abadia Dias' lower abdomen after doctors took an X-ray in the central Brazilian town of Goiania, in the state of Goias.

The five-centimetre-long scalpel was apparently left there by doctors in a public hospital in Campos Belos, Goias in 1984, when the woman, now 47, gave birth through a C-section.

The surgical instrument is to be removed sometime later this month. The woman has said she will sue the hospital in Campos Belos as soon as she is rid of the scalpel.
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