In Almaty, doctors at the Center for Pediatric Emergency Medicine faced a shocking case: during one shift, three children were admitted after swallowing magnets. One of them required a complex surgery to remove 59 balls from his intestines, reports infohub.kz.
According to the Almaty Public Health Department, the duty was extremely intense: medics had to perform three emergency operations on young patients with the same diagnosis — foreign bodies in the gastrointestinal tract.
The first to arrive at the emergency room was a two-year-old with abdominal pain. An examination revealed foreign bodies, and during surgery, doctors removed 25 magnets.
A few hours later, a second child, aged two and a half, was brought to the hospital. He had vomiting and abdominal pain. After emergency intervention, doctors removed 9 magnets. The boy spent ten days in the hospital.
“The third child arrived during the same shift, by morning, at the end of the duty. The child was under four years old, again with complaints of sharp abdominal pain, weakness, and vomiting. After examination, multiple foreign bodies were found in the gastrointestinal tract. Our team was truly shocked when we removed 59 magnets from the child's small intestine. By the time he sought medical help, the dangerous objects had already perforated the walls of the small intestine. This was one of the most complex operations that shift, on August 1,” said Aibol Sultanbekov, a surgeon at the emergency department of the Almaty Center for Pediatric Emergency Medicine.
Since the beginning of the year, the center has admitted 15 children who swallowed magnets. Doctors emphasize that each such case requires special attention, as multiple magnets can attract each other inside the body, causing severe complications, including intestinal perforation.
Medics strongly urge parents not to leave magnetic balls and similar toys within reach of young children and to carefully monitor what they play with.