Tiruvannamalai

According to ENT surgeons Elanchezhian and Kamalakannan and Dr Balamurugan the anesthetist, the coin was swallowed by Mithun (2) son of Loganathan (24) a daily wage earner in the town.

As the parents were unable to remove the coin themselves, they took the boy first to a private hospital from where he was referred to the Tiruvannamalai GMCH. Dr Elanchezhian said the coin was removed in 20 minutes using an endoscope and that the boy was fine.

However, he said that awareness needed to be created among parents not to give coins or small objects to small children as they invariably tend to swallow them inadvertently. “Parents give children money to buy snacks and this in itself becomes dangerous when the children swallow the coin,” he added.

Stating that the hospital gets an average of three such cases a month, he said, “We removed foreign objects from children’s throats twice in the last week alone.”