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More than 50 AA and AAA batteries were recently removed from a 66-year-old woman’s gut and stomach by medical professionals in Ireland after she ingested them in what appeared to be an intentional act of self-harm. According to the Huffington Post, which cited an article from the Irish Medical Journal, the woman was treated at St. Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin after consuming an initially “unknown number” of cylindrical batteries. Although her X-ray indicated that she had foreign items inside of her, the doctors were relieved to report that none appeared to be impeding her gastrointestinal (GI) tract and that none of the batteries had structural damage.
Doctors initially waited for the woman to expel batteries spontaneously from her body. The patient even succeeded in passing five AA batteries in a week. However, X-rays performed over the course of the subsequent three weeks revealed that the majority were still lodged internally, and the woman also started to develop abdominal pain.
The physicians said that the bloated stomach ended up hanging above the pubic bone due to the weight of the batteries. The team then made a small incision in the stomach and extracted 46 batteries from the organ, including AA and AAA batteries.
The four remaining batteries, which were lodged in the colon, were “milked” into the rectum and extracted through the anus, according to Science Alert. This increased the total number of batteries consumed to 55. The patient underwent a “uneventful recovery” after a last X-ray scan determined that her GI tract was finally battery-free.
The physicians told the publication, “To the best of our knowledge, this instance constitutes the highest known quantity of batteries eaten at a single moment in time.”
