A team of New Zealand surgeons recently removed nearly 100 high-power magnets a 13-year-old boy had swallowed, and which had caused necrosis in sections of his abdomen, reports AFP.
After suffering four days of abdominal pain, the teen was taken to Tauranga Hospital where “he disclosed ingesting approximately 80-100 5x2mm high-power (neodymium) magnets about a week before”, said a report by doctors in the New Zealand Medical Journal.
The magnets, which have been banned in New Zealand since January 2013, were bought on the online shopping platform Temu, they said.
An X-ray showed the magnets had clumped together in four straight lines inside his intestines.“These appeared to be in separate parts of bowel adhered together due to magnetic forces,” the surgeons said.
The pressure of the magnets had caused necrosis in four areas of the boy’s small bowel and caecum.
The surgeons removed the dead tissue and retrieved the magnets, with the child being able to return home after an eight-day spell in hospital.
“This case highlights not only the dangers of magnet ingestion but also the dangers of the online marketplace for our paediatric population,” said the authors of the paper, Binura Lekamalage, Lucinda Duncan-Were and Nicola Davis.
Surgery for ingestion of magnets can lead to complications later in life such as bowel obstruction, abdominal hernia and chronic pain, they said.
Temu said it was sorry to learn of the boy’s surgery.
“We have launched an internal review and reached out to the authors of the New Zealand Medical Journal article to obtain more details about the case,” a spokesman said.
AFP article – Surgeons remove up to 100 magnets from New Zealand teen's gut (Open access)
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
US commission warns about toys’ magnets after children’s deaths
No watching and waiting with ingested button batteries – study
Chinese doctors remove toothbrush lodged in intestine for 52 years
Doctors swallow Lego blocks in 'the noble tradition of self-experimentation'