It was a real stick-to-your-ribs meal.
Doctors were flabbergasted after discovering that a four-year-old’s “colicky” pain turned out to be caused by a magnetic bracelet that he’d swallowed.
“We present a case of a 4-year-old boy who ingested multiple magnetic beads,” reads the alarming case study, which is slated to be published in February 2023 in the “Journal Of Pediatric Surgery Case Reports.”
According to the article, the tyke had been taken to the hospital after experiencing “colicky abdominal” pain for two days, including “multiple episodes of vomiting and constipation,” Jam Press reported.
Following an examination, doctors initially diagnosed the boy with acute appendicitis and removed his appendix. However, his stomach pain persisted and he even started vomiting bile three days after the procedure.
After his symptoms still didn’t abate two days later, physicians performed an ultrasound to see what was amiss.
That’s when they discovered the startling cause of his pain: the child had a bracelet in his stomach. Accompanying X-rays show the foreign object, which shows an opaque loop of beads lodged inside the child’s abdominal cavity.
The parents were equally as flabbergasted as the doctors as they hadn’t seen their son ingest anything unusual.
To make matters worse, the body-infiltrating bauble had been obstructing the boy’s intestines and even digging holes into his bowels. In order to prevent more damage, doctors performed an emergency laparotomy — an operation in which surgeons make an incision in the abdominal cavity — and removed the bracelet, which consisted of 18 hexagonal-shaped magnetic beads. They also repaired the holes in the boy’s intestinal wall.
Thankfully, the child recovered quickly and was discharged while follow-up appointments revealed he was in good health.
In a similar incident in 2020, a 5-year-old in China was so enamored with magnets that he swallowed 123 magnetic beads — which had to be removed from his stomach during a four-hour operation.
