This woman swallowed 55 batteries, and this is the unfortunate reason
Most of the reports of cases of swallowing batteries are children who did it by mistake.
The current case is completely different, both in terms of the amount and the reason for the ingestion.
here are the details
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health
09/20/2022
Tuesday, September 20, 2022, 09:12 Updated: 09:42
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A story about a man without 40 knives (a story about a man without 40 knives)
Doctors in Ireland removed 55 batteries from a woman's intestines and stomach after she swallowed them in what appeared to be deliberate self-harm.
The 66-year-old woman was treated at St Vincent's University Hospital in Dublin after swallowing an initially "unknown number" of cylindrical batteries, according to the case report, published last weekend in the Irish Medical Journal.
An X-ray revealed multiple batteries in the woman's abdomen, though fortunately none were blocking her digestive tract, and no batteries were damaged or leaking.
The treatment team initially took a "conservative" approach, meaning they watched the patient closely to see if and how many batteries would pass through the digestive system on their own.
Over the course of a week, five AA batteries passed out of her digestive tract, but X-rays taken over the next three weeks showed that the vast majority of the batteries had failed to progress through her body.
At this point, the patient suffered from generalized abdominal pain.
The woman then underwent a laparotomy, in which surgeons made an incision to access her abdominal cavity.
They found that the abdomen, pulled down by the weight of the batteries, had swollen and stretched into the area above the pubic bone.
The batteries in the woman's stomach (photo: official website, Irish Medical Journal)
Some of the batteries that were removed from the woman's stomach (photo: official website, Irish Medical Journal)
The team then cut a small hole in the stomach and removed 46 batteries;
These included AA and AAA batteries.
Four more batteries, lodged in the large intestine, were "routed" into the anus and removed through the anus - this brought the total number of ingested batteries to 55.
A final X-ray confirmed that the woman's digestive tract was officially battery-free and she continued to make an "uneventful recovery."
"To our knowledge, this case represents the highest reported number of ingested batteries at a single time point," the doctors wrote in their case report.
Most of the battery ingestion cases published in medical journals describe cases in which a child swallowed small batteries, the report notes.
"The intentional ingestion of several large AA batteries as a form of intentional self-harm is an unusual presentation," the doctors reported.
So why batteries?
In more common cases of battery ingestion by children, it can sometimes pass through the child's body without causing harm.
But if a battery gets stuck in the throat, it can cause serious and even life-threatening injuries.
This is because the saliva jumps an electric current in the trapped batteries, triggering a chemical reaction that burns the esophagus and can lead to severe tissue damage and bleeding.
Swallowing larger cylindrical batteries may also pose these dangers, as well as the risk of chemical leakage from the batteries and blockage of the digestive system.
"The potential of cylindrical batteries to cause acute surgical emergencies should not be underestimated," the case report states.
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