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When a man arrived in the emergency room, doctors felt like they had a heart attack. But that was a false alarm: The man had in fact swallowed a battery that ruined his electrocardiogram (ECG), a measure of the heart’s electrical activity, according to a new report from the case.
After doctors removed the battery, the EKG returned to normal, according to the report in the newspaper on Monday, Nov.23. Annals of Internal Medicine.
“If someone swallows a single battery or several batteries, the EKG can mimic changes consistent with [myocardial infarction, or heart attack]Said Dr. Guy L. Mintz, director of cardiovascular health and lipidology at Northwell Health’s Sandra Atlas Bass Heart Hospital in Manhasset, New York, who was not on the case.
Related: 11 weird things people have swallowed
The 26-year-old was an inmate who arrived at the emergency department at Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence, Italy, complaining of stomach pain two hours after intentionally swallowing an AA battery. There, after spotting the battery on a x-ray, doctors performed an electrocardiogram, in which electrodes placed on the chest record the electrical activity of the heart and draw it as a wavy line on a grid background.
The EKG showed a sign of a heart attack called “ST segment elevation”. This means that a particular segment of the EKG that is normally flat is rather elevated, Mintz told Live Science.
The electrocardiogram was the only sign of the inmate’s heart attack. He had no history of cardiovascular disease and his only risk factor for heart disease was smoking, according to the report. He did not report any symptoms of a heart attack (such as shortness of breath) and his levels of cardiac troponin, a heart muscle protein released into the blood during a heart attack, were normal.
Previous case reports have documented people swallowing batteries and having EKGs with elevated ST, the authors said. For example, this effect has been reported in a man who swallowed six AAA batteries and another man who swallowed 18 AA batteries. The authors of the previous case reports had suggested that perhaps more than one battery was needed to modify the EKG. However, this study refutes this hypothesis.
Mintz called the report “interesting niche information”.
“[I] doubt [the] the majority of clinicians are aware of this phenomenon, “Mintz said. He advises physicians treating patients who have swallowed batteries to check for biological markers of heart function (such as troponin levels) before reacting to it. abnormal EKG, and remove the batteries as soon as possible.
But how could battery ingestion mimic a heart attack? The case report suggested that the battery’s contact with stomach acid could have produced an electric current that travels to the heart and affects the EKG machine. “[This is] not a proven mechanism, but it is a plausible mechanism, ”Mintz said.
Even though these patients didn’t actually have a heart attack, swallowing a battery could still hurt the heart. “Prolonged electrical effects could cause damage to the heart,” Mintz said.
There are of course other reasons not to swallow batteries. “Swallowing a battery is dangerous because failure can cause chemicals to leak or even intestinal obstruction,” Mintz added.
In this case, the man had not reported any complications related to the battery.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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