Five-year-old swallowed a coin and declared: "experiment failed "

Y., a five year old boy from the Haifa area, tried a "scientific experiment" at home, but according to the child's own words, the "experiment failed."


The curious child put a 10 agurot coin in his mouth, and put a magnet close to his cheek. The purpose of the experiment was to check if he can move the coin in his mouth, with a magnet attached to cheek, but during the performance, the young scientist had a "lab accident" and he swallowed the coin.


Luckily the coin slid into his throat and lodged in his stomach, without it being dangerous or hurting him. Immediately after swallowing the coin, he approached his parents and declared "experiment failed".

When the parents understood what this experiment was about, they were quick to get him to one of the kupat cholim clinics in their area, but there they were advised to wait until nature takes care of it. For two weeks the parents of the five year old waited for the coin to leave his body in a natural way, whilst tracking the coin movement through scans on the child's stomach, but finally, on the advice of their family doctor, it was decided to bring the child to Rambam hospital to help take out the coin.

The coin was extracted in a routine procedure, called Gastroscopy. The treatment is done by inserting an optical fiber with a tiny camera through the pharynx, allowing the detection of the coin and easy withdrawal. A few hours later, he was feeling well and released to his home.


According to Prof. Ron Shaul, director of gastroenterology unit at Rambam children who treated Y., the child was lucky: "Curiosity is natural when it comes to children, and scientific experiments are all very nice, but should be performed under the supervision of an adult. We see many cases of children who come to the hospital after swallowing foreign objects, and it doesn’t always end this way."

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!