3-year-old boy swallows 28 tiny magnetic balls, ends up having part of his gut removed

The ingestion of magnets by young children seems to be a growing emergency health issue over the past year both in the UK and the US. This brings health officials to issue warnings on the alarming rate of recorded emergency surgeries of this nature. The Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children has reported 19 cases of children between 2 and 14 years old that were brought in needing immediate treatment for magnet ingestion in 2019.

Their most recent case was a 3-year-old boy who was lucky enough to scrape through a surgical procedure that required doctors to remove part of his intestine. Tomas Quinn, from Newry, was brought to the emergency room of the RBHSC in April after he swallowed a total of 28 tiny magnetic balls.

The boy's mother, Magdalena Quinn was relieved over the fact that her son was able to survive the ordeal. The tiny magnetic balls were trapped between different parts of the boy's intestines, which made it difficult for the surgeons to extract them.

The mother recalled the heartbreaking procedure while processing her guilt for what had happened.

"They had to take all the intestines back out again and search bit by bit through it to find that wee grain."

"Two of them were too close together so they had to remove part of his intestines and patch up 14 holes. So he has loads of scar tissue in his intestines now. They burned holes in the intestines. Whenever they opened him up some of his intestines already leaked out."

A lot of the cases involving young kids had something to do with a popular magnetic ball toy. While the NHS has published material on dangerous ingestion by children, Ms Suzanne Lawther, a consultant in paediatric surgery at RBHSC, further explains: "The magnetic ball toys are about 10 times stronger than traditional magnets and if the magnets end up on either side of a piece of the digestive tract, the magnetic force is so strong that it actually interferes with the blood supply. If left untreated it can make children and adults very unwell and be potentially life-threatening."

Of the 19 cases of magnet ingestion at RBHSC, 42% were under the age of 5 and 58% were aged 10 or older, with some of them accidentally swallowing fake piercings made from magnets.

Incidentally, if a child swallows more than one magnet, these can cause erosion and holes in the bowel and eventually lead to sepsis then death if not operated on in time.