Multiple Magnetic Foreign Bodies Causing Severe Digestive Tract Injuries in a Child

Abstract

Foreign body (FB) ingestion is a common emergency as well as a major cause of accidental injury and represents a severe public health problem in childhood, especially in infants. Most cases of FB ingestion reported in children aged between 6 months and 3 years depend primarily on the fact that young children are more likely to explore objects using their mouth and are not able to distinguish edible objects from nonedible ones, their teeth are physiologically lacking, and they have poor swallowing coordination. Although, sometimes it can cause serious complications, FB ingestion generally has a low mortality rate. However, accidental ingestion of magnetic toys, as a rare kind of FB mostly encountered in children, has now become more common due to the increased availability of objects and toys with magnetic elements. The majority of magnetic FB traverse the gastrointestinal (GI) system spontaneously without complication, but in rare cases may cause severe damages to the GI tract due to its special pathogenesis [Kay and Wyllie: Curr Gastroenterol Rep 2005;7: 212–218]. Ingestion of multiple magnets may be related to increased morbidity resulting in a delay of recognition of FB injury that can lead to serious complications and require surgical resolution.