A 16-month-old boy was recently taken to the hospital after he appeared to swallow an object. Looking at the X-ray, the doctors were surprised to see a rather familiar face staring right back at them. Yup, that's SpongeBob, all right.
When the toddler arrived at the hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the doctors didn't know what he had swallowed. After looking at a lateral X-ray of the boy's side, they noticed a thin object in the esophagus. They figured it was a pin or hair accessory.
The frontal view, on the other hand, left no doubt as to what the toddler had swallowed.
Writing in Live Science, Bahar Gholipour tells us more:
"Then I opened the frontal view and was shocked. 'SpongeBob,' I screamed!!! I was amazed by the visible details. You can see his freckles, shoes and fingers…AMAZING," [Dr. Ghofran] Ageely wrote in an email to Live Science.
Doctors freed the stuck pendant from the boy's esophagus without any complications, and the boy went home. Ageely later shared the X-rays of SpongeBob's adventure on Radiopaedia.org, a Wikipedia-type forum where radiologists and medical students present and discuss medical cases such as foreign body ingestions.
The clarity of the pendant is quite extraordinary. You can actually see SpongeBob's painted-on face and the tiny ridges in the metal.
This case is amusing, but when kids swallow foreign objects it's serious stuff. This site provides important tips on what you should do in a similar event.
[Via Live Science]
Image: Case courtesy of Dr Ghofran Ageely, Radiopaedia.org. From the case Ingested foreign body - SpongeBob SquarePants.