Tots Throat Bleeds After AAA Battery Explodes In Mouth

Story By: John FengSub-EditorJoseph Golder, Agency: Asia Wire Report

These are the horrific throat injuries suffered by a toddler who chewed on an AAA+ battery until it exploded in his mouth and charred his oesophagus.

The one-year-old boy – named only as ‘Bei Bei’ – had been left on his own when his parents said they heard a “bang” from the other room and found the tot crying and bleeding from his mouth on 5th March.

The boy’s parents said they saw smoke coming out of his mouth. It took them an hour to reach Binzhou Medical University Hospital in East China’s Shandong Province, where Bei Bei was taken into emergency surgery.

A gastroscopy showed his oesophagus bleeding and charred from the exploding AAA battery, while his oral cavity was full of blood and pieces of the exploded battery cell.

Li Xiaomei, head of the hospital’s Paediatric Intensive Care Unit, said the boy’s injured throat was swelling quickly, forcing medics to intubate and feed oxygen down Bei Bei’s throat to prevent him from suffocating to death.

His oxygen tubes were removed seven days later, and 12 days after that on 24th March he was discharged with a feeding tube.

But Bei Bei was readmitted to PICU on 2nd April with a respiratory infection after he coughed while trying to eat on his own.

It was then that he underwent his first of two oesophageal dilation surgeries to expand the width of his recovering throat, which was found to be just 2 millimetres at its narrowest point.

The second procedure to aid food ingestion took place on 7th May.

Bei Bei’s latest gastroscopy on 8th May revealed a nearly fully recovered oesophagus, and he was discharged on 9th May.

The tot is now expected to make a full recovery.

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