Infants Should Not Wear Earrings!

Specialists at Schneider Children's Medical Center extracted an earring from the right main bronchus of the toddler's lung. She arrived on Saturday evening close to midnight at the Terem Emergency Clinic in Modiin Elite. The upset parents said that the mother had noticed that the infant who was in her arms, was holding her earrings but before she was able to remove them from her hands, the infant put the earrings into her mouth and swallowed them. One earring was swallowed while the second was inhaled into her lungs, which endangered her life. The parents rushed the child to Terem for immediate care where they took an x-ray and checked her clinical signs. At the same time, an ambulance was summoned to take the child to Schneider Children's.

Dr. Muaman Abu Rimli, a physician at Terem, said that "the x-ray clearly showed that the infant had swallowed two earrings, one of which was of the type that sticks to the earlobe and the second a hoop that looked that it was stuck in the lung and caused partial blockage of the airway that could have led to complete blockage causing her to choke. It was clear that at this stage, one of the earrings would not be expelled naturally and endangered her life due to aspiration or injury to the lung."

The infant was rushed to Schneider's ER and hospitalized for observation in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. One earring had indeed been inhaled while the second had been swallowed. She underwent two procedures: a fibro-optic bronchoscopy to view her airway passages, which was conducted by Dr. Roi Hod, a senior physician in the ENT Clinic at Schneider Children's. He was able to extract the earring from the bronchus with the assistance of Dr. Patrick Staffler, Director of the Bronchoscopy Service in the Pulmonology Institute. Then she underwent a gastroscopy conducted by Dr. Menaar Meter, senior physician in the Gastroenterology Institute at Schneider, to remove the second earring.

The infant recovered well and remained in the PICU for a short time, after which she was discharged.

Dr. Staffler noted that "we repeat and warn parents about paying close attention that small children and toddlers not play with small items or anything that might enter and choke the airway passages. It is not recommended to allow babies and toddlers to wear earrings or other jewellery which can be inhaled and swallowed and endanger the child's life. Should a child inhale a foreign body, medical assistance must be sought immediately and the child brought to the nearest hospital."