Two-year-old boy accidentally swallows eight needles
A two-year-old boy was rushed to hospital for life-saving surgery in Peru after he accidentally swallowed eight needles.
According to the New York Post, luckily for the mother, Narly Olórtegui, her son is fine after he accidentally swallowed the needles on the farm where she works, Jam Press reported.
The boy was rushed last week from the farm in the province of Mariscal Cáceres to Hospital II-2 in Tarapoto.
An X-ray of his abdomen revealed the eight needles, which were removed by medics in just under two hours.
“Getting them out cost me a little, but we did it with the support of the Lord. We even managed to get the bottom ones out,” surgeon Efrain Salazar Tito told CEN.
In a statement, the regional government noted there were two needles in the peritoneum (which lines the abdominal cavity) on the right side; three on the left side; one in the abdominal wall; and two others “dangerously situated” between the bladder and the rectum.
Pisco expressed her gratitude for the doctors who saved her son’s life.
“If it had not been for their timely surgical intervention, his health would have worsened, and the outcome would have been different,” she told Jam Press.
A single mom, Pisco said she took her son to work with her because she had no one else to look after him.
She said she didn’t notice he swallowed the needles because she was busy at her job.
It is believed they were used for injecting livestock at the farm.
“I didn’t realise because I was focused on my work,” Pisco said, per CEN. “Sometimes children put anything in their mouths when they crawl or when they begin to walk.
Doctors treated the small lesions in the boy’s small intestine.
He was temporarily placed on a liquid-only diet and discharged from the hospital several days later.
Medics reported the incident to local authorities because they couldn’t comprehend how the boy could have swallowed so many needles.
They suspected he might have been mistreated, CEN reported.
An investigation is ongoing.