RAK toddler saved after swallowing dry battery
A baby boy, aged one, who accidently swallowed a battery, has been saved after an urgent surgery at the Saqr Public Hospital here.
Khaleej Times learnt that the toddler, of an Arab origin, was playing with batteries unattended by any family member.
None of the family members was aware that the baby was playing with a dry battery and that he had swallowed it.
The family noticed the boy who was crying all the time — only after five hours — that he had fever and they took him to the hospital where they were shocked to hear about a 1.5mm long battery stuck in his esophagus.
The boy was immediately moved from the emergency section to the operation theatre where specialist surgeons of the ENT section removed the battery. “The family was not aware that the boy swallowed a dry battery,” Dr Abdullah Al Nuaimi, director of the RAK medical zone, told Khaleej Times late on Monday.
The specialists discovered the 1.5mm battery in the upper third of his esophagus, he added.
Mohammed Rashid bin Arshid, manager of the Saqr hospital, said the dry battery was too big for the little baby who is almost one year old.
“The battery was also in a sensitive and narrow part of the esophagus.”
It took the ENT surgeons over an hour to extract the oxidized battery, which remained in the baby’s esophagus for five hours, in an endoscopy procedure.
Dr Mohammed Ahmed Shawakh, ENT specialist and head of the ENT section at the Saqr hospital, led the medical team who performed the emergency surgery. ahmedshaaban@khaleejtimes.com