A 16-year-old boy spent two months with severe abdominal pain before doctors discovered that the metal bolts he had swallowed had been pulled together by a magnet he swallowed afterward, forming a clump that punched five holes through his intestine.
The case, indexed on PubMed, describes acuphagia, a rare form of pica defined by deliberate ingestion of sharp metallic objects. The boy had no prior psychiatric diagnosis. By the time he reached the hospital, he had been unable to pass stool or gas for four days and had fever and vomiting. Imaging showed clustered radiopaque objects in the small bowel, causing obstruction and secondary peritonitis.
