Irish Doctors Extract 50 Batteries from the Digestive Track of a Woman
Doctors at the St. Vincent University in Dublin extracted over 50 batteries from the intestine and stomach of a senior woman after an X-ray showed several batteries in her abdomen, Live Science reported.
Consumed batteries are not a unique discussion for doctors as they often encounter such events in kids. When a child swallows small button-sized batteries, they generally travel through the body without damaging it. However, the resulting injuries may be severe and even deadly when they become embedded in the throat.
The saliva can help produce an electric current in the throat, which may begin a chemical reaction between the trapped batteries that can wind up burning the esophagus, causing major tissue damage and blood loss.
And for the elderly female?
In this situation, the 66-year-old woman had consumed the batteries intentionally as an act of ‘self-harm’. Fortunately, none of the batteries blocked her gastrointestinal (GI) tract. The X-ray additionally revealed no indications of structural damage to the batteries.
Initially, the doctors took a conservative approach to see if the batteries might go through the GI tract without any assistance from their end. They observed her for a week, during which the patient passed five AA batteries. However, three weeks later, the majority of the batteries had failed to keep advancing through the GI system, and the patient started experiencing abdominal pain.
Interventions from the team of doctors
A staff of surgeons, therefore, operated upon the woman carrying out a procedure called laparotomy. The procedure consists on an incision made to access her abdominal cavity. They discovered that the weight of the batteries had pulled down the stomach, and it had expanded into the region above the pubic bone.
Subsequently, the surgeons cut a small opening in the stomach to remove the contents and recovered 46 batteries, a mix of AA and AAA, from the organ. Four batteries were discovered embedded in the colon, the longest part of the large intestine. These were then pressed into the rectum and taken out via the anus. Hence, a sum of 55 batteries was recovered from the elderly woman.
The last X-ray was taken to verify that the GI tract was free from any batteries. The patient has now completely recuperated, Live Science stated in its article.
“The deliberate ingestion of multiple large AA batteries as a form of deliberate self-harm is an unusual presentation,” the doctors filled out their report. “To the best of our knowledge, this case represents the highest reported number of batteries ingested at a single point in time”.
The details of their findings may be found in the Irish Medical Journal.
Originally published by: Interesting Engineering
