Traditional guidance has suggested that when a child swallows a button battery — those small round batteries that show up in everything from singing greeting cards to fidget spinners — one should wait to see whether it passes naturally. Caveats: unless it has lodged in the esophagus or if there are symptoms.
But a recent preliminary study is instead suggesting that parents get their child to a hospital regardless of whether symptoms appear. Researcher Dr. Racha Khalaf's team analyzed records of 68 children treated at four pediatric hospitals between 2014 and 2018 and determined that 60 percent showed some erosive damage to the stomach lining, even though many hadn't shown symptoms.
