IRISH health professionals have once again shown their ingenuity, in the curious case of a woman who recently swallowed over 50 batteries.
In an apparent act of self-harm, the 66-year-old presented at St Vincent's University Hospital in Dublin having ingested an "unknown number" of AA and AAA cells.
A report of the incident in the Irish Medical Journal says an X-ray revealed a "multitude" of the batteries in her abdomen, with all of them intact and none appearing to be obstructing her gastrointestinal tract.
Initially the medicos took a conservative approach - meaning they just stood by and observed how many batteries would pass through naturally.
"Over a one-week period she passed five AA batteries,but X-rays taken over the following three weeks showed the vast majority of the batteries had failed to continue progressing through her body," the report noted - with the poor female patient by this stage unsurprisingly experiencing "diffuse abdominal pain".
Subsequent surgical intervention managed to extract 46 AA and AAA batteries from her stomach, plus another four which had progressed into the woman's colon.
A final scan confirmed her body was now battery-free, with the doctors writing "to the best of our knowledge this case represents the highest reported number of batteries ingested at a single point of time".
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