In China, there is a saying about children: “gold-devouring beasts”, used to express the high costs associated with raising them, but a little girl took the phrase too literally. She was playing and swallowed a solid gold bar weighing 50 grams and measuring 4 centimeters in length.
Her family took her to the emergency room, and an X-ray revealed that the metal was still lodged in her stomach and had to be removed immediately, since the bar, being dense and having a smooth surface, could cause damage and even lead to serious perforations in the stomach and bleeding.
During the endoscopy, the doctors discovered that the gold bar was lodged in the gastric cavity, where they had an extremely narrow working space in which to maneuver. A small mistake could cause damage to the lining of the digestive tract.
So, with the help of a snare, they secured the bar and, despite the difficulties, managed to remove it intact in just a few minutes. Today, the girl is stable and recovering well, but her case serves as a reminder of how attentive we must be with young children: as they discover the world, any object that seems harmless to us can become a danger to them in a matter of seconds.