A toddler swallowed her mother’s diamond wedding ring and had to have it surgically removed.
The girl’s mother couldn’t find her diamond ring but didn’t think much of it until her daughter became unwell and started vomiting for eleven hours.
The woman rushed her 15-month-old daughter to the emergency room in Qingdao, China, where external examination found no cause for the little girl’s symptoms.
But then an X-ray revealed both the location of the mother’s diamond ring and the cause of the toddler’s illness: the jewelry was stuck in the child’s stomach.
Doctors decided to surgically remove the diamond because they were concerned that the diamond could be potentially dangerous to the little girl.
An X-ray showed the diamond ring was lodged in the toddler’s stomach
Another X-ray showed where the diamond ring was located in the toddler’s stomach
They also suspected that it would be difficult to pass it on naturally and without complications.
Doctors successfully removed the ring during surgery under general anesthesia. The girl reportedly recovered well and was released from the hospital after two days.
Foreign body ingestion in children is reported to be most common between the ages of one and three years.
The diamond ring that had to be surgically removed after the girl swallowed it
Small, slippery objects can be passed without complications, but even if the affected child has no symptoms, removal of the object should be considered as soon as possible.
Little Kazarie Dwaah-Lyder, 2, from London, died 14 months after swallowing a plastic ‘googly eye’, which went undetected on an X-ray because it was not metal.
For just over a year after swallowing the plastic imitation eyeball, the toddler continued ‘without symptoms’ until he was rushed to hospital in April last year, where he sadly died.
Now, in light of the ‘unforeseen’ death of the ‘beloved’ child, senior coroner Mary Hassell has written to senior doctors questioning the lack of national guidance for children suspected of having a non-metallic swallowed object.
Ms Hassell said she had heard evidence that children suspected of having swallowed a non-radio-opaque object, such as a googly eye, and who are showing symptoms should have an endoscopy – where a camera is attached to a tube in the patient is inserted.