A girl aged one year and three months from Cojusna village of Straseni district suffered cardiac-respiratory arrest after she inhaled several seeds. She was rushed to the Mother and Child Center in Chisinau, where she was operated. Head of the Center’s Intensive Care and Reanimatology Section Ana Oglinda has told IPN that the consequences would have been serious if the girl hadn’t been operated so soon.
The parents didn’t know how and when the girl inhaled the seeds as they left her in the care of her grandmother and went to work in the fields. When they returned home, they established that the girl couldn’t breathe and called an ambulance. The doctors determined that the girl inhaled apple and sunflower seeds and nuts.
Ana Oglinda warned that the apples given to kids must be cleaned of seeds, while the sunflower seeds and nuts are banned at this age. She recommended keeping the children permanently under supervision as they are very active and curious and can endanger their lives. Some of the children who swallow objects never recover fully even if they are operated and treated.
An inhaled object obstructs the airway and causes respiration difficulties as well as inflammations and infections. Such incidents can happen at any age, but are more frequent among children aged between 1 and 3.
According to the Health Ministry’s National Health Management Center, 33,567 home accidents involving children were recorded in 2012. Sixty children younger than five died as a result of suffocation, traumas, poisonings, drownings and road accidents.
