A swallowed coin

It was safely lodged in the child’s stomach, but...

Just a couple of months ago on a Sunday afternoon, I got a frantic call from a young doctor that his little son had swallowed a coin. The X-ray he sent me on WhatsApp showed the coin in the child’s stomach. A swallowed coin is surely a major concern. Complications are possible. But from the X-ray, one could easily infer that there was no emergency. It was “safely” lodged in the stomach — at least for the time being. I reassured my friend. In most such cases, the dictum is “wait and see”. Of course, he also knows that, but reassurance was the need of the moment. As a senior doctor, I told him that I would send the X-ray and other details to all my friends in India and across the globe and get their opinions. Obviously, it was easy to take out the coin from the stomach through an endoscope. But all my friends suggested the typical wait-and-see option. A paediatric endoscope was unavailable in nearby hospitals. The question of whether it was an old coin or a new one also came up because the size difference could matter in a child. Of course, no such clue was immediately available.