A 13-year-old in New Zealand recently swallowed nearly 200 high-powered neodymium magnets. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t accidentally stumble upon a new health supplement that increased his vigor and tripled his vim. He needed some of his bowels extracted.
According to a recent case report published in The New Zealand Medical Journal, doctors at Tauranga Hospital had to go on a scavenger hunt in the kid’s abdomen, discovering four separate linear chains of metal objects.
Once inside, these tiny, brightly colored magnets, which are often marketed as harmless toys, did what magnets do. They are attracted to each other. Not only did they connect, they forcefully squeezed separated loops of the boy’s small bowel and caecum together.
This created patches of pressure necrosis, the medical term for tissue dying from a lack of blood flow. The surgical team had no choice but to remove part of his bowel. Thankfully, he recovered.
New Zealand Teen Loses Part of Intestine After Swallowing 200 Magnets
This happened in New Zealand, which permanently banned the sale of these super-strong ‘rare earth magnets’ back in 2013 following prior hospitalizations. And, if you’re wondering how the kid was able to get their hands on some, the internet is to blame.
The answer is always the internet. The teen admitted to buying the magnetic balls from the online marketplace Temu, so they were probably of shi**y quality anyway.
Legal experts are now pointing out the alarming difficulty of enforcing a domestic safety ban when overseas retailers operate without restraint, especially when unsupervised children make the purchases.
Adding fuel to this ridiculous fire are social media trends that encourage kids to use these magnets as fake tongue or lip piercings, a trend that inevitably leads to accidental, life-threatening ingestion.
As the Tauranga surgeons noted, the accessibility of these magnets is a big concern if you’re at all worried about child safety. If you think your kid may have eaten a bunch of magnets, you need to get them to the ER immediately.
But do it knowing that more than three-quarters of these cases require surgery.
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