Laws of attraction: management of magnetic foreign body ingestion

Description 

An 11-year-old girl with global developmental delay presents with a 4-day history of nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain after the ingestion of multiple foreign bodies. She was haemodynamically stable with no gross abnormalities on laboratory tests. An abdominal X-ray was obtained which demonstrated two radio-opaque foreign bodies in the left lower quadrant without free air (figure 1A). On physical examination the patient had significant point tenderness in the left lower quadrant with guarding. The decision was made to proceed to the operating room where a diagnostic laparoscopy was performed. On entering the abdomen, there was no significant free fluid or gross contamination. After running the bowel, two magnets were identified in adjacent loops of small intestine with evidence of bowel wall ischaemia in-between. Approximately 15 cm of jejunum was inspected and the foreign bodies which included two magnets and an earring (figure 1B) were...

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