"Button Batteries" Pose Major Health Risk For Kids

Tag : button

They're tiny, tiny things, sometimes not much bigger than a babyAspirin and rarely larger than a quarter. But those little silverbatteries you find in products from toys to watches to calculatorsalso present a big, big danger if swallowed.
It might seem like a far-fetched scenario to some, but given thepenchant children have for swallowing things, it's a scene that'soccurred enough times to cause official concern.
"Even if they're spent, even if they're used up, they are stilldangerous," says Dr. Paolo Campisi, an ear, nose and throat surgeonat Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children . "The problem is that they leak an alkaline solution, which iskind of the opposite of acid. But it's more dangerous than acidbecause what it does is it starts to erode and it keeps going. Itdoesn't stop."
The danger is very real for Campisi, who earlier this year had toperform emergency surgery on a two-year-old girl who'd swallowed anickel-sized button battery that stuck in her esophagus and beganeating away at the tissue. Only an eventual X-ray revealed"metallic foreign body in the esophagus."
"Sure enough," Campisi recalls, "it was a button battery and it hadalready corroded outside of its casing and had eroded most of thewall of the esophagus, to the point where I couldn't see beyond it.It stopped like a blind pouch."
That little girl made a full recovery, and considered herself luckyeven though she was in the hospital for two weeks. Asked what couldhappen if left untreated, Campisi is unequivocal: "Death."
"Eventually the hole will go through the esophagus. And surroundingthe esophagus is the middle of the chest ... So you've got theheart, the lungs and all the major blood vessels. So if aninfection ensues in that area, then you can die.
"The next worst is scarring or narrowing of the esophagus, in whichcase you might not be able to swallow or you'd always have to haveliquids or you'd have to have a feeding tube put in."
But it's not just swallowing the batteries that can cause damage.Kids have been known to put them in their ears and nose, wherewarm, moist conditions encourage corrosion.
Nation-wide numbers aren't available, but Sick Kids alone removedfour from children between 2001 and 2006. U.S. figures show thatabout 2,000 people of all ages swallow the disks each year. Elderlypeople battling dementia or poor eyesight might also mistake themfor pills in the wrong situation.
What complicates the problem is that not all doctors are trained torecognize a button battery on X-ray, despite the fact that theround object is surrounded by a telltale "halo." Often the batteryis misdiagnosed as a coin that would eventually pass harmlesslythrough the digestive system. Some doctors have recommended skulland crossbones, the international symbol for poison, be etched onthe batteries, but there's no word on whether the battery makerswould comply.
Still, manufacturers are aware that ingestion of batteries ispotentially deadly and warnings are put on packaging. There is evena 24-hour National Button Battery Ingestion Hotline at 1-202-625-3333 that accepts collect calls from U.S. and Canadian citizens.
In the meantime, what experts really recommend is that responsibleparties get rid of the batteries as soon as they're no longer ofuse.
"You have to be aware that these things are dangerous and that youshouldn't leave them lying around," says Campisi. "And they shouldbe disposed of properly, and never in the reach of children."