Research volunteers swallow Lego heads to find out how long it takes to get through

Researchers find the time needed for a Lego head to cross the body through brave volunteers. In the end, parents do not have to worry because Lego heads should appear in the feces just days after.

Accidental ingestion

In the new study entitled "Everything is great: do not forget the LEGOs", a team of pediatricians wanted to know how long it would take for a Lego head to go through the system. Indeed, among the many foreign objects that children put in the mouth and swallow accidentally, small pieces of toy are the second most frequently swallowed.

To find out, the researchers recruited six adult volunteers gathered in an online community of pediatric health professionals. Anyone who has undergone gastrointestinal surgery, has difficulty swallowing objects or has an "aversion to research in faeces" has been examined.

CAT and FART Scores

The six volunteers swallowed a Lego head and held a "stool diary" before and after swallowing, where they documented the frequency as well as the looseness of their stool on the basis of the hardness score and transit stools. After swallowing Lego's head, each volunteer had to sift his own faeces to determine if the toy had already passed. The time it took before Lego's head was recovered was dubbed FART or Time Found and Recovered.

It turns out that worried parents because their child has swallowed a Lego head do not have to worry because five of the FART volunteer scores ranged from 1.14 days to 3.04 days, with an average of 1 , 71 days or 41 hours.

That said, the researchers noted that it was a small study focused on adults rather than on toddlers and that small toys of different shapes could take a different time. In addition, one of the volunteers never even recovered Lego's head.

The study is published in Journal of Pediatrics and Child Health.

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