Medical doctors in Eire eliminated 50 batteries from a girl’s intestine and abdomen after she swallowed them in an obvious act of deliberate self-harm.
The girl, 66, was handled at St. Vincent’s College Hospital in Dublin after ingesting an initially “unknown quantity” of cylindrical batteries, in line with a report of the case, printed Thursday (Sept. 15) within the Irish Medical Journal (opens in new tab). An X-ray revealed a mess of batteries in her stomach, though fortunately none seemed to be obstructing her gastrointestinal (GI) tract and no batteries confirmed indicators of structural harm.Â
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The remedy staff initially took a “conservative” method, that means they noticed the affected person intently to see if and what number of batteries would go by way of the GI tract on their very own. Over a one-week interval, she handed 5 AA batteries, however X-rays taken over the next three weeks confirmed that the overwhelming majority of the batteries had didn’t proceed progressing by way of her physique. By this time, the affected person was experiencing diffuse stomach ache.
The girl then underwent a laparotomy, during which surgeons made an incision to entry her stomach cavity. They discovered that the abdomen, pulled down by the load of the batteries, had grow to be distended and stretched into the realm above the pubic bone. The staff then reduce a small gap within the abdomen and eliminated 46 batteries from the organ; these included each AA and AAA batteries.
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4 further batteries, caught within the colon, have been “milked” into the rectum and eliminated by way of the anus — this introduced the overall variety of ingested batteries to 55. A closing X-ray scan then confirmed that the lady’s GI tract was formally battery-free and he or she went on to have an “uneventful restoration.”Â
“To the perfect of our data, this case represents the best reported variety of batteries ingested at a single cut-off date,” the medical doctors wrote of their case report.
Most instances of battery ingestion printed in medical journals describe cases during which a toddler has swallowed small, button-style batteries, the report notes. “The deliberate ingestion of a number of massive AA batteries as a type of deliberate self-harm is an uncommon presentation,” the medical doctors reported.
In these more-common instances of pediatric battery ingestion, the batteries can typically go by way of a toddler’s physique with out inflicting harm. But when they get caught within the throat, they will trigger extreme and even life-threatening accidents, in line with UCSF’s Benioff Youngsters’s Hospitals (opens in new tab). That is as a result of saliva jumpstarts an electrical present within the trapped batteries, triggering a chemical response that burns the esophagus and may result in extreme tissue harm and bleeding.Â
Swallowing bigger, cylindrical batteries may also current these risks, in addition to the chance of chemical leakage from the batteries and GI tract obstruction, Reside Science beforehand reported.Â
“The potential of cylindrical batteries to lead to acute surgical emergencies shouldn’t be underestimated,” the case report states.
Initially printed on Reside Science.Â
