Abstract

Objective: Water absorbing beads (WAB), also known as water monkey in Turkey, are popular foreign bodies and swell when they come in contact with water or water containing solutions. If ingested, they have potential for causing intestinal obstruction. The aim of the present study is to compare the results and the differences of WAB ingestion in Turkey and world literature.

Method: Patients who had undergone surgery due to ingestion of WAB were screened, and analyzed using the most used medical databases according to author, year, country, age, sex, time elapsed from onset of symptoms to admission to hospital, diagnosis and treatment applied.

Results: Twenty-four cases have been reported so far starting from the year 2011 when the first case operated due to WAB ingestion in the world was published. All of the cases aged ≤ 2 years and they were operated due to small bowel obstruction. In Turkey, very small number of studies have been performed related to WAB ingestion and none of the cases have been operated so far.

Conclusion: In Turkey none of the patients underwent surgery due to WAB ingestion, because nationwide sales of WAB are limited, precautions have been taken. The number of cases are very scarce because WAB are being used mostly outside the household thus the risk group can not reach WAB or presumably the cases are not being reported.

Atıf vermek için: Mehmetoğlu F. Çocuklarda su emen boncuk yutulması sonuçlarının Türkiye ve dünya literatüründe karşılaştırılması. Çoc. Cer. Derg. 2019;33(3):130-5.