Ill-Timed Fart During Laser Surgery Lights Woman on Fire

Lighting fires with your farts is not just a party trick; it’s also a surgery risk, apparently. A woman in Japan suffered serious burns due to a flatulence-sparked fire, according to a story in the Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun (and spotted by The Daily Dot).

The incident occurred in April, but hospital officials released a report on the fire at the Tokyo Medical University Hospital on October 28. According to the experts who conducted the report, a laser seems to have ignited the gaseous expulsion, despite a lack of flammable materials in the operating room. The woman was having a laser surgery on her cervix (a common treatment for abnormal cervical cells, for one), putting the laser radiation quite close to the source of the gas. It lit the surgical drape covering her lower body on fire, causing serious burns to her lower legs and waist.

It’s already horrifying enough to imagine farting in such a vulnerable situation, but the incident also serves as a reminder that there's a real possibility that your routine surgery could go wrong, leaving you with burns or a farting penis or carrying around a surgical tool in your body.

[h/t The Daily Dot]