More children are swallowing batteries and landing in the ER
Button batteries and lithium coin batteries power many electronic devices that families tend to have in their homes: TV remotes, key fobs, thermometers, scales, toys, flame-free candles — even singing greeting cards.
But the batteries, which are small, round and shiny, can pose a significant health threat to young children who swallow them or put them in their nose or ears.
And a report published last week in the journal Pediatrics suggests that the problem is growing. There were more than twice the number of pediatric battery-related visits to the emergency department from 2010 to 2019 compared with 1990 to 2009 — most for children younger than 5.
From 2010 to 2019, there was, on average, one battery-related pediatric visit to the emergency department every 1.25 hours, up from one every 2.66 hours in the previous decade, according to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System.
“Parents may not realize that certain products in their home are powered by button batteries and are often unaware of the ingestion risk batteries pose,” said Mark Chandler, the study’s lead author and a senior research associate at Safe Kids Worldwide, a nonprofit that works to combat childhood injury.
Swallowing a button battery is dangerous because the battery generates an electric current when it comes into contact with bodily fluids like saliva that can burn through a child’s body tissue and lead to life-threatening complications or even death. The data in the new study did not provide detailed information on patient outcomes, but 12% of the children who were taken to the emergency department required hospitalization, most because of ingestion.
“The most common button batteries used in readily available household devices are about the size of a quarter, which is a perfect size to get stuck in the esophagus,” said Dr. David Brumbaugh, an associate professor of pediatrics with the University of Colorado
School of Medicine, who did not work on the new study.
“Serious damage to tissue can occur in a matter of hours,” he said. “So for pediatric gastroenterologists, otolaryngologists, pediatric surgeons and anesthesiologists — the teams that get these batteries out of the esophagus — these ingestions are really scary.
You are in an emergency situation to get the battery out, and super-worried about the damage being done.”
In August, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that strengthens safety standards for products with button batteries, requiring that they carry a warning label to keep the batteries out of children’s reach and ensuring they have child-resistant battery compartments. Known as Reese’s Law, it was named in honor of Reese Hamsmith, an 18-month-old child who died in December 2020 after she swallowed a button battery from a remote control.
Dr. Ian Jacobs, medical director of the Center for Pediatric Airway Disorders in the Division of Otolaryngology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said he believed the new law would help reduce the number of battery-related injuries and emergency department visits.
“I think we’ll start to see the curve bend a little bit, but it will take time,” said Jacobs, who is
Batteries