Kids usually aren’t paying attention to what they put in their mouth, and that can end badly. A four-year-old in Saudi Arabia can attest to that after swallowing a bobby pin which led to a perforated intestine, pierced kidney and surgery.
Huffington Post reports that when the toddler was first admitted to the hospital, doctors diagnosed him with a UTI and send him home with antibiotics. On another visit to a different facility, an X-ray revealed the pin laying in his right upper abdomen. Doctors said the object that had been in his body for a month would pass in time and sent him home once again. In January, three months after swallowing the pin, his symptoms hadn’t gone away and he’d been suffering from a fever and chills. The ends off the pins rubbed off and became sharp, piercing through the first section of his small intestine and penetrating the kidney. Doctors opted for surgery to remove it, and the boy made a full recovery. His odd case was published on November 5 in the journal BMJ Case Reports.
"Children actually start exploring the world using their mouth as soon as they are able to pick up objects," said Dr. Yasmin Abdulaziz Yousef, of the department of surgery at KAMC-JD, National Guard Health Affairs in Jeddah. She treated the boy and co-wrote his case study. She added that kids typically don’t experience complications after swallowing an object because they tend to "pass through the gastrointestinal tract and end up in the diaper."
