A 4-year-old boy had to have surgery after ingesting a bobby pin that showed up on his x-ray. Photo: BMJ 2015(RIYADH, Saudi Arabia) — Doctors in Saudi Arabia were stunned to find that a boy’s urinary tract infection was caused by 2-inch-long bobby pin that he had ingested weeks earlier.
A study published Thursday in the BMJ medical journal says that the unidentified boy had told his parents he ate the bobby pin weeks before symptoms started, but they assumed it would pass naturally.
However, for weeks the boy had signs of a urinary tract infection and doctors could not identify the source.
An X-ray and CT scan revealed the infection was caused by the bobby pin, which had traveled from the digestive tract to the kidney after puncturing his intestine. The boy quickly underwent surgery to have the pin removed and his symptoms went away.
In a statement the boy’s father said he regretted not being aware of his son’s behavior earlier.
“When my son started to complain, I and most of the doctors who saw him were not worried because he did not show any alarming symptoms,” the boy’s father said in a statement in the case study. “But once I was informed that my son had a ‘bobby pin’ stuck in his kidney and that he would need an operation, I started to blame myself for that delay in management.”
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