Before emergency doctors in Saudi Arabia gave a 6-year-old boy olive oil to help move a coin stuck in his lower esophagus, they studied his X-ray for one specific warning sign. It was missing, and that absence told them the round object was a coin and not a button battery.
That detail, easy to overlook in a story about a kitchen staple, is what made the unusual approach possible. About an hour after the boy took a small dose of olive oil followed by water, repeat X-rays showed the coin had traveled all the way to the junction of the small and large intestines. He passed it within 24 hours.
