• Pediatrics · Oct 2012

    Case Reports

    Water-absorbing balls: a "growing" problem.

    • Irving J Zamora, Lan T Vu, Emily L Larimer, and Oluyinka O Olutoye.
    • Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, Texas, USA.
    • Pediatrics. 2012 Oct 1; 130 (4): e1011-4.

    AbstractForeign body ingestion is a potentially serious clinical problem in children. We report a case of an 8-month-old infant who developed complete bowel obstruction requiring laparotomy due to ingestion of a superabsorbent polymer ball with advertised growth up to 400 times its original size. Most ingested foreign bodies that pass through the pylorus will make it safely through the gastrointestinal tract. This is not true for water-absorbing balls that progressively increase in size and cause intestinal obstruction. Other household products and toys on the market use a similar polymer-based water-absorbing technology, thus increasing the risk for accidental ingestion by young children. These rapidly expanding objects can cause significant morbidity, and timely diagnosis and treatment are prudent to improve patient outcomes.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…