A 21-year-old Chinese man has had 36 metal nails removed from his gut after swallowing them in a bad mood.

The patient, name not disclosed, had reportedly swallowed the nails in a rage and ended up suffering from severe abdominal pain for five hours.

When his family found out, they took him to the Second People’s Hospital of Fujian Province in the city of Fuzhou and explained the situation.

Hospital doctors performed checks on the patient and saw he had a number of foreign objects in his stomach.

Between 2am and 5am, three gastroenterologists, named as Fu Xiaoyan, Huang Xiaofeng and Huang Qianrong, removed a total of 36 sharp iron nails.

Huang Qianrong said: “If the nails weren’t taken out in time, they would have moved into the small intestine and caused intestinal perforation, which can be life-threatening and the consequences are disastrous.

He said the team had to “perform endoscopic foreign body removal as soon as possible”.

According to the news site Baidu, a total of 36 iron nails were removed from the patient’s stomach during the emergency operation.

Each nail was around 5.5 centimetres in length with a sharp end.

Due to the timely operation, the nails had not been corroded by gastric acid and appeared as good as new after removal.

The medical teams said the nails did not damage the 21-year-old patient’s oesophagus and gastric cavity.

Chief physician Fu Xiaoyan said: “The ability to promptly remove the nails is due to the multidisciplinary collaboration of the hospital.”

The patient is currently recovering from his ordeal.