MONTANA – As holiday shopping picks up, parents and caregivers are urged to consider safety when buying toys for young children, as certain toys can pose hidden dangers that may lead to emergency room visits.
Dr. Douglas Barnhart, a pediatric surgeon at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital, emphasizes the risks associated with small parts that children might swallow. “Little kids explore the environment, and one of the ways they explore the environment is they put things in their mouth,” he said. “And so, we see virtually everything in kids’ airways, when they have aspirated into their lungs or their G-I tract when they have swallowed it.”
Dr. Barnhart explains that while some items like coins may cause little harm if swallowed and removed correctly, coin batteries, also known as lithium or button batteries, can cause severe damage even after removal. “Every month we see kids with button batteries in their esophagus’s either here or at Primary Children’s Hospital,” he stated. “It’s literally minutes, because it will burn that fast.”
Another common issue Dr. Barnhart sees is the ingestion of small magnets. If multiple magnets are swallowed, they can connect parts of the intestine, causing serious gastrointestinal issues. Intermountain Health highlights that these concerns are particularly relevant for young children who may not be able to express their discomfort.
Local toy shops, like Action Toys, are committed to helping find age-appropriate gifts. Donna Pippin, owner and creator of Action Toys, said, “From three years old up to eighty years old, we try to push that there is a play value there that doesn’t involve hitting, shooting, hiding it, it requires using your imagination to use these toys that you see on the road and see on the farm.”
Intermountain Health hopes that by reminding caregivers of these potential dangers during the holiday season, they can help prevent some of these emergencies in the coming year.
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