Christmas Eve 2021 (24 December) is not only not a happy holiday for the Christine family living in Motherwell, Scotland, England, but also a painful day. After their youngest son swallowed a coin cell battery, several internal organs were severely burned, and finally died of ineffective rescue.
Why do kids swallow coin cell batteries? Why does a small coin cell battery cause such serious damage to the human body?
Swallow the battery by mistake, and the heart burns out a hole
On Christmas Eve, Christine and her husband took their two-year-old son, Huey, to a Christmas movie together, which was supposed to be a joyous holiday. However, at about 7:30, when Christine carried the cute child to bed and was about to coax him to sleep, the child suddenly coughed urgently. The young mother found Huey's face pale and looking very painful, so the couple rushed the child to the hospital.
After entering the emergency room, the doctor first delivered oxygen to the baby, so that he regained consciousness, but to everyone's surprise, his condition began to deteriorate sharply soon after. According to Kristin, "I'll never forget this terrible scene, his blood flowing all over the floor, everywhere, and I can't understand why something like this happened in just one night..."
When Huey was transferred to Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, doctors pushed him into the operating room for surgery. The 12-hour operation allowed the parents outside the door to live like a year, but the hospital ultimately failed to deliver the child to them healthily, but only found the cause of the child's illness.
It turned out that a small coin cell battery was stuck in Huey's esophagus, causing his heart to burn a hole the size of a coin, and his other internal organs also suffered different degrees of damage, especially the lung failure was very serious.
"Even if he survives, he may continue to suffer from heart disease and brain damage, and will need to lie in bed all the time and rely on a ventilator to survive." The doctor told the Christine couple about this cruel fact and let them make their own choices. Eventually, Huey spent his last few hours on earth in their arms.
After returning home, Christine found that the electric toy he gave to his son was missing a coin cell battery, and it was this Christmas gift that took Huey's life, which was a regrettable and lamentable result.
How do coin cell batteries burn internal organs?
In a very ordinary electric toy, a button battery smaller than a coin, why can it produce such a huge destructive force after entering the human body?
First of all, we should be clear that the shell of the coin cell battery is generally sealed with stainless steel, so it will not cause much harm to the human body, just like the coin, swallowing can be excreted through excretion and emetic.
The toxic substances are inside this layer of the shell, and the chemicals inside the battery are different. The negative electrode of the battery may contain heavy metals such as zinc and lithium, while the positive electrode is substances such as manganese dioxide or silver oxide, which once enter the human body, will cause symptoms such as poisoning and nausea. If they react further, they release heat, causing burns to human organs.
In addition to these toxic substances, what really causes serious burns to the child's internal organs is the electrolyte in it. The electrolyte of the battery, whether it is strongly acidic or alkaline, has a strong corrosive effect, and like sulfuric acid, it will burn people's skin and internal organs. If these solutions burn the blood vessels, they can also cause the blood to fail to coagulate, so the patient may die of excessive blood loss.
Apples corroded by sulfuric acid
Logically, even if there are so many harmful substances inside the battery, but there is a layer of solid stainless steel on the outside of the battery, why does the liquid in the battery still leak? And a good battery outside the human body, as long as it enters the human body will leak, why is this?
This is mainly related to the mucous membrane in the esophagus. Our esophagus is full of mucous membranes, and after the coin cell battery is swallowed into the body, once it is clamped by the mucous membrane, it will form a conduction path, causing the battery to short circuit in an instant. We know that short circuits in home appliances will heat up or even catch fire, and batteries will also heat up and cause mucosal burns, and even burn through the esophagus and trachea to cause perforation.
Ham corroded by coin cell batteries
After the battery is short-circuited and heated, the shell begins to loosen, and a chemical reaction begins to occur inside, which can easily lead to electrolyte leakage. If the alkaline substance in the battery enters the stomach and reacts violently with the stomach acid in the body, it will not only cause severe pain, but also cause the stomach wall to be corroded, resulting in stomach bleeding.
More seriously, the electrolyte will corrode people's blood vessels, and then flow into various organs of the human body with blood, once the electrolyte flows into the heart, it will directly threaten human life. Just like what the baby went through in this incident.
What should I do if I accidentally eat a coin cell battery?
In fact, infants swallowing batteries caused casualties are not a few accidents, according to the United States Toxic Substances Control Center report statistics, the United States alone, because of the swallowing of batteries to the hospital more than 3500 children a year. Although the number of people who mistakenly eat cigarette butts, magnetic beads and drugs is also large, the harm of batteries is even greater.
So, what should parents with small babies at home do when they find that their babies have accidentally eaten coin cell batteries?
After the child accidentally eats the coin cell battery, the first reaction of many parents may be to feed the child milk in an attempt to dilute the electrolyte released by the battery, but it is a big mistake.
A 10-month-old baby girl in Dalian, after swallowing a button battery by mistake, the parents rushed to feed the child milk, and the child began to cry loudly and with a very painful expression.
After being sent to the hospital, the doctor said that milk and the mucous membrane of the esophagus are very similar, which will aggravate the short circuit of the battery, not only can not dilute the toxicity of the battery, but will aggravate the disease.
What to drink without milk? As early as 2018, at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the team of entolaryngology experts published a paper in the journal Laryngoscopy: "After swallowing a coin cell battery, eating honey can reduce the degree of harm to children." ”
If you don't have honey at home, or if you've already done emergency treatment, you still need to go to the doctor immediately and get the batteries out of your body. If the battery stays in the child's stomach for one minute, the child will be more dangerous, and the longer it stays, the more corrosive the organ may be, and even cause esophageal perforation.
In fact, to prevent children from eating various foreign bodies by mistake, the most effective way is to prevent them. Children from 6 months to 6 years old are most likely to be curious about the world, children grasp everything and like to stuff it into their mouths, which is their way of knowing the world, so parents must strengthen supervision and attach great importance to the risk of children ingesting foreign bodies.
Usually, small items such as coins, buttons, batteries and various drugs should be hidden and placed in places where children cannot see or reach them to avoid accidental eating.
Small objects that are easily swallowed by children
Finally, I hope that every parent will escort the safety of their children and not cause their children to suffer because of temporary negligence. I also hope that every child can grow up safely.