Prisoner swallows 14 lighters to avoid jail, but trick fails

JEDDAH: In a bizarre incident, a team of doctors in Madinah recently spent four hours surgically removing 14 lighters from the stomach of a prisoner who had swallowed them to avoid jail. The prisoner had apparently thought he would be able to spend his sentence in a hospital if he did so, according to a press report. This is just one of many similar incidents handled by doctors at King Saud Medical City, where nearly 1,500 children between the ages of 2 months and 14 years have been admitted for swallowing insects, magnet pieces, pins, locks, screws and batteries. Mousa Al-Harmi, a digestive system consultant at the hospital, said small children under the age of four face the greatest threat to their health if they swallow objects because of the size of their digestive systems. In some cases, children have died swallowing sharp and flammable objects. Others have lost their lives swallowing the antiseptic pills used for drains in homes, he said. The hospital has dealt with 905 cases where the patients were not aware they had swallowed a foreign object, which had been expelled naturally by the body. -arabnews