Toddler Saved by Emergency Surgery After Swallowing 8 Needles

A 2-year-old boy who accidentally swallowed eight needles has been saved by doctors.

The child, from the Mariscal Cáceres province in Peru, ingested the needles at the farm where his mother, Narly Olórtegui Pisco, worked.

The child was then rushed to Hospital II-2 Tarapoto, where surgeon Efraín Salazar Tito found that the eight needles had become lodged throughout his abdomen.

"Two in the peritoneum on the right side, three on the left side, one in the abdominal wall and two others that were dangerously between the bladder and the rectum," a release from the San Martin Regional Government said.

The needles are thought to have been for injecting cows at the farm where the boy's mother worked, which the child must have found and swallowed.

"Regarding the needles that [her] son ingested, [she] pointed out that it was an oversight by the owner of the farm where [she] works, since there are cattle there that are constantly attended to by the veterinarian, so [she] presumes that the needles used on the cows were the cause of this accident," the release said.

Children often swallow objects—also known as foreign-body ingestions—as they frequently put objects in their mouths. A 2019 study in the journal Pediatrics found that visits to the ER due to foreign-body ingestions in children under age 6 have nearly doubled since 1995, rising from 9.5 per 10,000 children to 18 per 10,000 in 2015. Coins, toys, jewelry and batteries are among the most frequently swallowed items.

Round objects can be a major choking hazard to a child, while swallowing sharp objects like nails, screws, or in this case, needles, can be very dangerous, as they can cut the inside of the child's digestive tract, or become lodged in other internal organs. In one case, where a 20-year-old woman swallowed a sewing needle by accident, the needle initially traveled through her bowels but then ended up in her lung, a study in the Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery explains. The study also states that "foreign bodies account for 15 percent to 35 percent of all bowel perforations."

Thankfully, the Peruvian child had all eight needles successfully removed over a two-hour operation, during which the surgeons checked and mended small lesions in the boy's small intestine.

The boy is now temporarily on a liquid diet due to the fragility of his intestines, but is expected to be able to leave the hospital in two or three days.

Pisco expressed her gratitude to Salazar and the other doctors, thanking them for so quickly removing the needles.

"If it had not been for the timely surgical intervention, his health condition would have worsened and the outcome would have been different," the release says.

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about foreign body ingestion? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.