Criminal professional body packers and harmless "swallowers"

Body packing practices used by professional drug smugglers are sometimes imitated. However, both groups can develop the same clinical symptoms induced by body packing. The paper describes four cases of criminal professional body packers and two cases of "swallowers" not regarded as criminals who required medical treatment. The authors discuss the necessity of an abdominal X-ray and show how the increasingly professional methods used by body packers make a reliable diagnosis more difficult.