{"id":663297,"date":"2026-11-01T04:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T04:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/663297\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T04:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T04:26:11","slug":"rectal-massage-twice-stopped-a-mans-hiccups-and-his-doctors-later-reported-5-more-successes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/663297\/","title":{"rendered":"Rectal Massage Twice Stopped a Man’s Hiccups, and His Doctors Later Reported 5 More Successes"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 60-year-old man hospitalized with acute pancreatitis started hiccuping<\/a> after doctors inserted a nasogastric tube. Removing the tube did not help. Neither did medication or a series of maneuvers. After two days, his physicians in Haifa, Israel, tried something few patients would request: digital rectal massage.<\/p>\n

The hiccups stopped abruptly. When they returned several hours later, a second round stopped them again, and they did not come back during the next five days. He went home with no remaining symptoms. Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan and Arie Oliven of Bnai Zion Medical Center described the case in February 1990 in the Journal of Internal Medicine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What is less widely known is that the team did not stop at one patient. In a later letter, they reported using the technique successfully in five more people with intractable hiccups.<\/p>\n

Sugar, Eyeball Pressure, Then a Gloved Finger<\/p>\n

The man’s doctors first worked through the usual list. According to the report, he swallowed a teaspoon of granulated sugar, had the back of his throat stimulated with a nasal catheter, and tried the Valsalva maneuver, which involves straining against a closed airway. Carotid sinus massage on the neck and pressure on the eyeballs also failed, as did metoclopramide, diazepam and haloperidol at standard doses.<\/p>\n

A hiccup is an involuntary spasm of the diaphragm<\/a> followed by a sudden closure of the vocal cords, which produces the familiar sound. Many of those tactics aim at the same target: the vagus nerve, which helps carry the reflex signals behind hiccups. The authors noted that nerve fibers in the rectum are sensitive to pressure and belong to the same parasympathetic system. Massaging the rectum, they proposed, could increase vagal tone and interrupt the hiccup reflex.<\/p>\n

When the hiccups returned, the second massage used a slow, continuous circular motion. The authors argued the maneuver was easy and safer than carotid massage, the Valsalva maneuver, or eyeball pressure, and they suggested trying it before drugs. They also cited a report in which rectal massage stopped a dangerously fast heart rhythm after other vagal maneuvers had failed, evidence that the technique can strongly stimulate the vagus nerve. The authors described theirs as only the second reported case of rectal massage for hiccups.<\/p>\n

An Emergency Doctor Got There First<\/p>\n

The first came from Francis Fesmire, an emergency physician who described stopping a patient’s intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage in a brief 1988 report in Annals of Emergency Medicine.<\/p>\n

In 1993, Odeh and Oliven wrote to the journal now known as JAMA Otolaryngology\u2013Head & Neck Surgery<\/a> to point out that a recent review of hiccups had left the technique out. They reported using it successfully in five more patients with intractable hiccups and said they tried it before potentially dangerous maneuvers such as carotid sinus massage or eyeball compression, and before turning to drugs.<\/p>\n

In 2006, Fesmire and the Haifa team shared the Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine, according to Improbable Research<\/a>, which runs the awards.<\/p>\n

Still No Standard Hiccup Cure<\/p>\n

Most hiccups stop on their own within minutes. Hiccups lasting more than 48 hours are considered persistent, and those lasting more than a month are called intractable. Those can disrupt eating, sleep, and recovery from illness.<\/p>\n

Decades after the Haifa report, the evidence for any treatment remains thin. A 2015 systematic review in Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics<\/a> found reports covering 341 patients in 15 studies but no high-quality data. Small randomized trials support baclofen and metoclopramide, and observational data suggest gabapentin and chlorpromazine also help. The authors suggested baclofen and gabapentin as first-line options, noting they are less likely than older antipsychotic drugs to cause side effects during long-term use, with metoclopramide and chlorpromazine held in reserve.<\/p>\n

A 2017 review in the Journal of Emergency Medicine<\/a> noted that chlorpromazine is the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for hiccups and concluded that the available evidence did not support specific treatment recommendations. Of 10 drugs reported to work, only baclofen, gabapentin, and metoclopramide had been studied prospectively.<\/p>\n

A Curiosity, Not a Home Remedy<\/p>\n

The rectal massage reports have clear limits. Odeh’s 1990 paper describes a single patient, and the follow-up letter gives few details about the five additional cases. No controlled trial has tested the technique, and hiccups sometimes stop on their own, which makes it hard to know whether any intervention caused the relief.<\/p>\n

Stimulating the vagus nerve can also slow the heart, one reason clinicians use caution with vagal maneuvers.<\/p>\n

The more important message from the case may be its starting point. The man’s hiccups began after a medical procedure during a serious illness, and persistent hiccups<\/a> can signal problems ranging from reflux to infections or nerve irritation. Anyone with hiccups lasting more than two days should see a clinician rather than experiment at home.<\/p>\n

Key Questions Answered<\/p>\n

What happened in the 1990 case?<\/p>\n

A 60-year-old man with pancreatitis developed hiccups after a nasogastric tube was inserted. Digital rectal massage stopped them twice.<\/p>\n

Why would rectal massage stop hiccups?<\/p>\n

The authors proposed it stimulates pressure-sensitive nerves linked to the vagus nerve, interrupting the hiccup reflex.<\/p>\n

Was it tried on other patients?<\/p>\n

Yes. The same doctors later reported success in five more patients with intractable hiccups, though with few details.<\/p>\n

Is it a proven treatment?<\/p>\n

No. It has never been tested in a controlled trial.<\/p>\n

What treatments do doctors use for persistent hiccups?<\/p>\n

Reviews point to baclofen, gabapentin, metoclopramide and chlorpromazine, though high-quality evidence is limited.<\/p>\n

Published by Medicaldaily.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 60-year-old man hospitalized with acute pancreatitis started hiccuping after doctors inserted a nasogastric tube. Removing the tube…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[298700,298695,163,298699,298701,85,298696,46,298697,298702,298698],"class_list":["post-663297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-baclofen-for-hiccups","tag-digital-rectal-massage","tag-health","tag-hiccup-cure","tag-ig-nobel-prize","tag-il","tag-intractable-hiccups","tag-israel","tag-persistent-hiccups-treatment","tag-rectal-massage-as-a-treatment-for-hiccups","tag-vagus-nerve-hiccups"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}