2-Year-Old Child Undergoes Complicated Procedure After Swallowing Over 200 Magnetic Balls

Doctors in Russia removed more than 200 magnetic balls from a 2-year-old boy's stomach during a complicated procedure.

Surgeons at the Emergency Children's Surgery and Traumatology Research Institute in Moscow performed a two-hour-long procedure with an endoscopic device to remove the balls. The device can remove one to four balls at a time.

After the procedure, doctors said the child was lucky that the balls did not travel to his intestines. An open surgery would be required in that case, which could have been life-threatening.

The team of doctors told Mir TV that the balls had developed sharp edges due to the gastric juices in his stomach. This was potentially risky as they could have perforated the organ's membrane.

The incident came to light in mid-January after the toddler's parents noticed that his stools were black in color. An X-ray revealed that there were multiple metal balls inside the child's stomach, Yahoo News Australia reported. The child reportedly swallowed the objects over a period of two months.

Doctors said the magnetic balls were most likely part of a children's toy that the toddler had access to. After the surgery, the child was said to be in a good health.

In a similar incident reported last month in the medical journal Annals of Emergency Medicine, multiple "marble-like objects" were removed from a teenage boy's stomach. The incident came to light when the boy went to see doctors at a hospital after suffering from abdomen pain.

"Abdominal computed tomography (CT) showed an engorged appendix, which confirmed the diagnosis of acute appendicitis," researchers wrote at the time. "The CT imaging also incidentally revealed multiple small round hyperdensities in the distended stomach."

The teenager later told doctors that he had consumed bubble tea the night before. It was later revealed that the "marble-like objects" were actually tapioca pearls.