Doctors in Ireland recently removed more than fifty AA and AAA batteries from a 66-year-old woman's gut and stomach after she swallowed them in an apparent act of deliberate self-harm, reports NDTV.
A report published in the Irish Medical Journal, the Huff Post reported that the woman was treated at St. Vincent's University Hospital in Dublin after ingesting an initially "unknown number" of cylindrical batteries.
Her X-ray report revealed foreign objects in her body, but doctors said that thankfully none appeared to be obstructing her gastrointestinal (GI) tract and no batteries showed signs of any structural damage.
Initially, doctors waited for the woman to pass batteries out of her body naturally. Over a one-week period, the patient even managed to pass five AA batteries.
However, X-rays taken over the following three weeks showed that most were still stuck inside her body - and the woman also started to experience abdominal pain.
Owing to the weight of the batteries, the distended stomach ended up hanging above the pubic bone, the doctors explained. The team then cut a small hole in the stomach and removed 46 batteries - including both AA and AAA batteries - from the organ.
As per Science Alert, the four remaining batteries, stuck in the colon, were "milked" into her rectum and removed through the anus.
This brought the total number of ingested batteries to 55. A final X-ray scan then confirmed that the woman's GI tract was officially battery-free and she went on to have an "uneventful recovery."
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
