A five-year-old boy in China had to undergo surgery to remove 123 magnetic beads he had swallowed watching television while his parents were away from home. The medical staff was shocked when they discovered the beads bundled up inside the child’s body.
The toddler was with his 12-year-old sister when the incident occurred. Their father Mr. Wu had gone to work with his wife. While focusing on the television, the boy picked up the toy balls that lay next to him and swallowed them one after another. The sister did not notice it first but when the boy started choking, she found out what had happened. She then gave him some water to drink after which the boy was able to breathe again.
When the parents returned home, the child told them that he had swallowed just one bead. He was immediately taken to a local doctor for examination who said that the bead would be excreted in a few days. When the toy ball did not appear in almost a week, the parents decided to take the child to The Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University in south-western China.
The doctors were shocked to discover a huge bundle of the tiny magnetic beads inside the boy’s stomach which appeared in an X-ray scan. They took him for an emergency operation to clear out his stomach. “It’s rare to see (swallowing) so many (magnetic beads). Because the number of magnetic beads is relatively large, the operation time was long, and the procedure was difficult,” Dr Chen Wanwei said. “Two surgical instruments had been worn out,” he added. The boy is undergoing recovery at the medical facility.
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