The following is a Public Service Announcement.
If you are a home with small children that has a "toy" called Buckyball magnets, out of protection of your children, get rid of them immediately. If you don't, but do know of a home that has so-called "toy", again remove these magnets from at least a 3 mile radius of any small child.
I do not know how these dangerous magnets are still sold in America under the guise of a toy. But small children frequently ingest delightfully colored small round balls. One. Two. Maybe three or ten. As they pass through the GI tract of aforementioned small child, their strong magnetic fields WILL with 99% certainty find each other, attract, and create holes in whatever unfortunate layer of GI tract happens to lay between them.
Small children put small things in their mouths. A fact any mother or father can attest to. My case log book is littered with countless children I've taken to the OR to remove objects lodged either in their esophagus or lungs. Isolated harmless small objects, once past the stomach... well, we watch and wait. But, if it is multiple magnets, these children require surgery to remove magnets, before ingested magnets are able to find each other, and following the laws of physics burrow through the walls of the intestines creating fistulas on their way to connect.
My most recent encounter was a 4yr old. For some reason, can be argued either good or bad or both, but for some reason this 4yr old did not stop at one, two, three or ten buckyballs, but went on to ingest over 200 magnets. The large magnetic bolus sat in the stomach bouncing off the pylorus, but without passing through. It wasn't until a week of vomiting that the child was brought in for evaluation and an xray revealed the culprit.
The child underwent endoscopy to attempt removal without surgery since they were all sitting in the stomach. We gave it about a 50% chance.... which might have been too generous. It failed, and from endoscopy we rolled the child to the OR.
So, like I said, this is a Public Service Announcement. If you have buckyballs. If you see buckyballs. If you even smell buckyballs. Get rid of them please. Whether one, two, three, ten or 200, I have yet to see any child avoid a trip to the OR once they have been ingested.
Love and Prayers.
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