Glass shard 'in leg for 12 years'

Alex Maggs with the glass which was removed from her leg

A woman has had a shard of glass the size of a playing card removed from her leg - 12 years after it became embedded there.

Alex Maggs, 29, from Malmesbury, Wiltshire had fallen through a window at a nightclub on the Greek island of Corfu in 1992.

Ms Maggs had treatment for an eight inch gash in her leg and a broken arm.

She only realised the three inch shard had been left inside the wound this July, when her thigh began to swell up.

Surprise

In considerable pain, she went to the Ridgeway Hospital in Swindon, where an X-ray revealed the shard of glass in her thigh muscle.

I couldn't believe how big it was Alex Maggs

Until then, she had no idea the glass had gone unnoticed by medics at the time of her accident.

She had been on several holidays, including trekking in Patagonia, and rode, jogged, skied and swum regularly.

Surgeons finally removed the shard in an operation last week.

Ms Maggs said: "I don't know why it suddenly started to hurt. It may have been from when I went dinghy sailing a few weeks ago and made a few out-of-the-ordinary stretches which may have moved the glass.

"I couldn't believe how big it was. It was three inches long and about two inches wide, but it was the chunkiness that really surprised me - it was about half a centimetre thick!

"I'd been carrying it around in my leg since 1992."