If you had hand-held video games, watches or any other electronics under your tree, those shiny, button-sized batteries were likely in the box, too, and those batteries can be a critical problem if a child swallows one.
Janna Day, a nurse and the education and outreach manager at the Iowa Poison Control Center, says the moisture in the throat can trigger the flow of current in the battery, which can lead to serious trouble in the esophagus.
“The esophagus is that tube that goes from your mouth down to your stomach, and if a battery gets stuck there, it can cause some really significant burning,” Day says. “That can happen quite quickly, even within just a couple of hours of that ingestion, there can be burning down in the esophagus.”…