A man ended up needing a plastic ball yanked out of his rectum, after supposedly shoving it in there to treat his ‘haemorrhoids’.

The 51-year-old rushed to hospital in the early hours of the morning, confessing to medics that he had the tennis ball-sized object inside his anus.

In the company of his wife, he stated it was ‘pushed in’ two days before to treat his piles.

But surgeons tasked with retrieving the 7cm x 7cm ball — originally part of the man’s vacuum — found no evidence of haemorrhoids. 

Writing in a medical journal, doctors in Jordan revealed that he had tried to ‘extract the foreign body using a screwdriver and spoon’. 

The 51-year-old rushed to hospital in the early hours of the morning, confessing to medics that he had the tennis ball-sized object inside his anus

In the company of his wife, he stated it was ‘pushed in’ two days before to treat his piles. But surgeons tasked with retrieving the 7cm x 7cm ball — originally part of the man’s vacuum — found no evidence of haemorrhoids

Initial attempts to remove the ball at hospital proved unsuccessful. 

The man, who wasn’t identified, stayed overnight at the Princess Basma Teaching Hospital in Irbid, allowing the team to work out a plan of attack.

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Asked to lay flat on his back with his legs in the air, surgeons armed with ‘sufficient lubrication’ tried to pull the ball out manually. 

However, they failed because the ball was ‘wider than the pelvic outlet’.

Left with no other option, the man’s stomach had to be cut into to allow the team to get closer to the object. But even that failed.

Dr Mohammad Athamnah and colleagues wrote: ‘An attempt to push the impacted ball downwards through the rectum and facilitate trans-anal extraction was fruitless.

‘Unfortunately, the foreign body was tightly wedged in the pelvis, thus moving the impacted ball upwards was also unsuccessful.’

Surgeons then decided to ‘carefully cut’ the ball into three smaller pieces using an electric drill inserted through his dilated anus.

This made it ‘easy to grasp’, allowing the team to extract the three individual pieces with ‘minimal damage’.

Details of the grisly seven-hour operation were revealed in the International Journal of Surgery Case Reports.

People most commonly shove objects into their rectum for sexual pleasure.

Initial attempts to remove the ball at hospital proved unsuccessful. The man, who wasn’t identified, stayed overnight at the Princess Basma Teaching Hospital in Irbid, allowing the team to work out a plan of attack

This is partly to do with the number of nerves in the anus making it highly sensitive, and so men can simulate the prostate, an erogenous part of the male reproductive system.

The insertion of objects into a rectum, also known as anal play, carries a number of risks.

As well as getting stuck objects, they can also potentially perforate the bowel which can be deadly as material from the digestive tract can spill into other parts of the body, causing an infection.

The NHS advises that anyone exploring anal play do so safely, and use an object with a flared base to prevent it from getting lost inside.

Eating a high-fibre diet, to make poo softer and easier to expel, can ease symptoms of piles.