The magnets had begun to kill tissue along his intestines, doctors said.
It’s a macabre medical tale updated for our modern day. In a case report out today, doctors describe how a young boy in New Zealand was hospitalized and required surgery after he ingested dozens of small magnets—magnets allegedly bought off the popular, China-based marketplace Temu.
Surgeons detailed the strange events in the New Zealand Medical Journal Friday. Though the magnets caused serious damage to his intestines, the doctors did successfully remove them, and the boy was eventually discharged from the hospital.Magnet mishap
According to the report, the boy was admitted into the hospital four days into having generalized abdominal pain. He told the doctors that about a week earlier, he had eaten roughly 80 to 100 high-power neodymium magnets, measuring 5 by 2 millimeters, which were purchased from Temu.
Medical imaging soon revealed that the magnets had bunched up into four separate straight lines throughout his guts. What’s worse, these clumps had started to cause necrosis, or dead tissue, along his intestines. Doctors operated on the boy, removing both the magnets and dead intestinal tissue.
