Doctors from the Edmond and Lily Safra Children's Hospital at Sheba Medical Center performed an urgent intestinal amputation on a two-year-old toddler from central Israel after the child had ingested a chain of magnets, resulting in severe vomiting and intestinal obstruction.
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X-ray scan revealed 17 powerful magnetic balls in the child's gastric system, which caused extensive damage, leading to surgery for the removal of a portion of the intestine.
"Increasingly, we are seeing cases like this. This is already the fourth baby we've treated since the beginning of the year," explained Dr. Daniel Shenhar, director of the Pediatric Surgery Department at Safra Hospital, in an interview with the Ynet studio. "The magnets separate in the intestines, causing the loops to adhere together, resulting in pressure and the subsequent formation of holes.
In the scan, you can see 17 individual magnets of varying sizes. They were not clustered together but spread across different locations, causing four distinct holes in the intestines. The child presented with vomiting and intestinal obstruction, and upon taking them to the operating room, we discovered the extensive damage that required the removal of a portion of the intestines."
Kids swallow stuff all the time. What's the problem with magnets?
"Usually when swallowing foreign bodies, they pass through the intestines and come out without many problems. The problem here is that these are very strong magnets that pass between two different loops that are usually not adjacent, because they don't swallow it as one lump, but in bulk, one by one.
"This game should be kicked out of the house. It is very stimulating. As you saw in the picture, these are magnets of different colors and sizes, it is very beautiful, you can assemble all kinds of structures and chains from them but this game is dangerous. Since the beginning of the year, we have already treated four such cases and every time we stand and watch and they say, 'My God, how can this be?'"
How's the toddler doing?
"He is recovering after abdominal surgery. It will take a good few days for all the connections we made in the intestines to heal. He's expected to make a full recovery."
In a similar case, a two-and-a-half-year-old toddler in Afula's Haemek Medical Center required an invasive operation after having swallowed five small magnetic balls during playtime, necessitating their removal from the digestive system.
Dr. Marwan Elias, a senior resident in the Pediatric Surgery Department, was the one who handled the operation. "The parents brought her to the emergency room, suspecting that she had swallowed [the magnets] while playing. Despite the absence of symptoms, an abdominal X-ray revealed that the magnets had reached the intestines. After monitoring without ejection, a colonoscopy operation was performed to safely remove them."
The pediatric gastroenterology unit team was gearing up for surgery, but Dr. Samah Tator, a senior physician in the unit, successfully extracted the magnets, eliminating the need for surgery. "The interconnected arrangement of the magnets in the shape of a flower within the digestive system played a role in preventing damage to the intestine. We have encountered life-threatening situations where magnets puncture the intestinal walls," he says.
"In the past year, we've examined four cases of toddlers who suffered substantial intestinal damage from swallowed magnets. It's crucial to remind parents to keep magnets out of reach when there are infants and young children at home."