This case report, by the surgeons across the street at Baylor, describes a novel cause for bowel obstruction in children. Apparently, in the course of plant cultivation, it is useful to have water-retaining gel spheres. Advertised to retain water and grow to 400 times their original size, a child swallowed a “Water Balz” and developed a small bowel obstruction requiring laparoscopy and enterotomy.
More interestingly, the surgeons obtained five of these balls and evaluated their growth pattern. The balls began life at ~0.95cm in diameter and, after 96 hours, reached a diameter of ~5.5cm, most of the growth in the first 12 hours. Based on this, the surgeons estimate any swallowed balls would likely easily pass through the pylorus before resulting in complete bowel obstruction.
The claim of growth to 400 times size, however, is unfounded. The balls they studied only grew to 200 times original size.
“Water-Absorbing Balls: A “Growing” Problem”
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22987870