The most commonly swallowed items include barrettes, rocks and buttons, Local 6 News reported.
"You may not even know until all of the sudden you notice a bunch of toys are missing and you ask the child where they are and they go (points to mouth)," emergency room physician Dr. Frank McGeorge said. "You'll be surprised at how much they have collected in their little stomachs." The most popular swallowed item is money.
"We see coin, after coin, after coin, after coin, after coin, after coin," McGeorge said. "They're just constantly found in kids' abdomens."
However, children can swallow not so common items, putting their lives at risk.
Local 6 News showed an X-ray of a toy fork lodged inside a child's belly.
Another X-ray showed a boy who swallowed magnetic pieces of a block one at a time. When they hit his stomach, they reconnected, according to the report.
"They went in and pulled them apart individually and had to take them out one at a time," McGeorge said. "It's amazing what kids can do."
The report also showed an X-ray of a row of button batteries that could be deadly to a child.
"They can create a local electrical circuit in the esophagus in particular, that erodes through the esophagus and that can cause a perforation and quite frankly, that can lead to death," McGeorge said.
Some of the most dangerous items children swallow include safety pins.
"This (safety pin) is behind the tongue, but above the airway," McGeorge said. "So, the child came in wheezing and drooling and it wasn't until they did the x-ray that they found out it was a pin."
Local 6 News reported that wheezing or trouble swallowing are two important signs that your child has swallowed something. Doctors warn that if your child swallows and object, it is important to get an immediate X-ray.
Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.
