A five-year-old girl in Beijing was saved by medical staff after swallowing a four-centimetre gold bar while playing, according to local reports.
The child ingested the item, which weighed approximately 50 grams, while at play. Her parents waited six hours for the metal object to pass naturally through her digestive system before taking her to hospital when it failed to exit.
Attending physicians expressed serious concern that the heavy ingot had become stuck in the young girl's digestive tract. Medical staff warned that a metallic object of that size and weight risked causing internal organ tears and dangerous internal bleeding, prompting them to insist on immediate intervention.
Endoscopic Procedure
Surgeons decided to perform an emergency endoscopic procedure to remove the precious metal without resorting to open surgery. Endoscopy is a non-surgical medical technique where clinicians use an endoscope, a long flexible tube fitted with a camera and light, to view internal organs.
During the operation, doctors guided the flexible camera tube down the child's throat into her digestive system to locate the obstruction. Surgeons discovered the bar resting inside her stomach cavity.
Using specialized instruments passed through the endoscopic tube, the medical team managed to safely retrieve the foreign object within a few minutes. The girl was uninjured during the procedure and made a rapid recovery.
The incident was reported by the South China Morning Post, an English-language daily newspaper based in Hong Kong. Beijing, the Chinese capital, houses specialized paediatric hospitals designed to handle emergency foreign body ingestions in children.
Similar Incidents in Animals
Foreign object swallows involving gold have also been recorded in domestic animals. In Thailand, two Pomeranian dogs required urgent veterinary surgery after swallowing expensive gold jewellery.
The two small dogs ingested jewellery valued at hundreds of thousands of rubles. Gold accumulated inside the pets' stomachs, forcing veterinarians to carry out emergency operations to extract the precious items before serious injury occurred. Pomeranians are a toy dog breed known for being small, active, and prone to accidentally ingesting small household items.
