17-Month-Old Baby Dies After Swallowing Battery, Mother Warns Of Complications

A Texas mother has decided to open up after her 17-month-old daughter died due to complications from swallowing a battery.

Trista Hamsmith appeared on NBC's "Today" show this week to speak about the incident. She also urged other parents to be more careful.

On Oct. 31, Hamsmith noticed that her daughter, Reese, was wheezing. She took the baby to the pediatrician thinking she might have a cold. The doctor said the toddler was having croup, an infection in the upper airway that generally affects children, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The next day, Hamsmith noticed that a button battery had gone missing from a remote control. Thinking her daughter might have swallowed it, she took her to a local emergency room. The X-rays confirmed the mother's suspicions. A CT scan showed that Reese had a hole in her esophagus and trachea.

Reese underwent surgery in October and returned home. However, she was again taken to the emergency room several days later after more complications arose.

"We found out that a fistula had been created, which is like a passageway," Hamsmith said. "There was a hole burned through her trachea and through her esophagus. When that tunnel formed, it was allowing air to go where it didn’t need to be. Food and drinks also went where they didn’t need to go."

The toddler's condition kept on deteriorating as she had to be sedated and put on a ventilator. She even underwent another surgery. The child died on Dec. 17, 2020.

"The autopsy report came back of complications from a button battery ingestion," the mother said.

Now Hamsmith is warning other parents to be careful and keep a good eye on children to avoid such a situation. She is also demanding manufacturers make safer batteries.

"We just need safer batteries," she said.

Speaking on the show, Dr. Emily Durkin, the medical director of children's surgery at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital in Michigan, said that swallowed batteries can cause serious harm if they get lodged in the esophagus.

"If you get a narrow, flat, pancake-like button battery that gets stuck at one of these natural narrowings, then the front wall of the esophagus collapses against the button battery and the back wall," the doctor, who did not treat Reese, said. "[This] completes that circuit, and the electric current actually flows through the esophageal tissues. And when that happens, it starts to kill the tissues at the burn."