The magnets in Bender’s digestive tract had to be removed via emergency surgery, during which doctors had to repair four holes in his colon. “There is tissue trapped between the magnets,” Rosenfield told CTV News. Joseph Bender, now five, was taken to hospital, where doctors found magnets that had been swallowed separately had adhered to one another as they moved through his digestive tract. The child featured in the case study was three years old when he swallowed toy magnets that looked to him like candy. They are so powerful the body cannot expel them on its own. If an X-ray shows more than one magnet in the child’s digestive tract, they may have to be removed by endoscopy, a laxative or surgery. But the authors write that incidents of children swallowing magnets are more common than previously thought, and related emergency department visits have skyrocketed over the past decade.Īt Sick Kids, doctors have had to remove magnets from more than a dozen children over a one-year period, with four needing surgery. In the past, a child who swallowed a magnet was monitored until it passed through the digestive tract, often without any health consequences. The force created through the bowel or stomach wall may result in pressure necrosis and eventual perforation.' “However, multiple magnets, especially when swallowed at different times, can attract each other through loops of the gastrointestinal tract. Daniel Rosenfield of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. 'Swallowing a single magnet is generally innocuous, much like swallowing any other inert foreign body,” write the authors, led by Dr. Magnets that attract each other from different points in the intestinal tract can lead to serious health consequences for the child, as tissue that is stuck together dies off and becomes infected, the study’s authors write.

And because newer magnets - neodymium-iron-boron magnets, or rare-earth magnets - are between 10 and 20 times stronger than older magnets, they can stick together through loops of the bowel. The study, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, found that children often swallow more than one magnet.

Newer, more powerful magnets are putting children at greater risk for life-threatening health problems, says a new Canadian case study, which also found that incidents of kids swallowing magnets is more common than previously believed.

Magnet crowd cafe