Chinese boy has 70 magnetic balls surgically removed after inserting them into his penis
- Doctors perform two-hour procedure on 11-year-old, who had complained of pains in belly after inserting 5mm balls
- Hospital says it sees two or three such cases a year, involving objects including electric wires and ear scoops
Doctors in southeastern China have performed surgery to remove 70 magnetic balls from an 11-year-old boy after he inserted them into his penis out of curiosity.
The unnamed boy was taken to Zhejiang University’s School of Medicine Affiliated Children’s Hospital on Sunday night after he complained of pains in his belly, the Hangzhou-based City Express reported.
After X-ray images showed a shadow in his bladder, the boy admitted what he had done.
The 70 balls, each with a diameter of 5mm, were retrieved from his bladder in a minimally invasive operation lasting two hours.
“The balls stick to each other and it’s difficult to remove them as a whole lump, so at the beginning we could only pick up two or three at a time,” Tao Chang, a surgeon at the hospital, was quoted as saying.
“After we had taken out around 50 balls, the remaining ones formed a line and we took those out in one go.”