Magnetic balls, a popular toy among children and marketed to boost creativity, resulted in the punctured intestine of a nine-year-old who swallowed them. The child had swallowed a total of 14 magnetic balls, causing her to repeatedly throw up green vomit over two weeks.
Doctors could not deduce the problem at first as they had not known the child swallowed the magnetic toys, reported The Straits Times. The culprit was eventually discovered after a scan, and the child underwent emergency surgery last month to remove the magnetic balls, measuring 3mm to 5mm in diameter.
It was reported that two stretches of her intestines were irreversibly damaged and had to be removed.
The girl’s mother, named Mrs Premchand, and her surgeon at Thomson Medical Centre, Dr Nidhu Jasm, have called for a ban on the toys.
“When (the vomiting) first started on May 9, we took her to KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, but they thought it was a viral infection and gave her antibiotics,” said Mrs Premchand.
She said that the vomiting stopped, giving them temporary relief, before starting again a week and a half later.
She added that her daughter had a habit of putting things in her mouth “to feel the texture of things.”
Dr Nidhu said this case was possibly the second in Singapore, while several similar cases have been reported in the United States, China, Britain, and Australia.
In April this year, a mother from New South Wales warned other parents after her two-year-old son swallowed 22 pieces of the magnetic toys.
“I could feel (the tight wrap of) the balls when I put my fingers in. What happens is the magnets are (strongly attracted to one another), and this is very tight. It’s not easy to pull them apart. This squeezing blows a hole in the intestines – it usually takes about a week to 10 days to manifest,” said Dr Nidhu to ST.
“There are hundreds of these balls, and if a few go missing, the parents won’t know,” she added. “Even if the child playing with them doesn’t swallow them, a younger sibling crawling around on the floor might.”
The child is recovering well following a three-day stay in the hospital. The magnetic balls have since been thrown away.
Children swallowing items is a hazard that every parent should monitor. Equally so, netizens were surprised that the nine-year-old was unaware of refraining from doing so.
“The problem is not the toy. The problem is why did the girl swallow the toy. At 9 yrs old, a child should be old enough to not swallow foreign objects. There should be a more compelling reason to why the 9 yr old swallowed the toy,” commented Facebook user Peter Pang.
“If the parents already know these about their child, then the more they should exercise more sense and responsibility when deciding whether to buy the toy,” added Facebook user Kak Woll. /TISG
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