Yes, really. University of Melbourne researcher Dr Andrew Tagg and a group of five paediatricians ate a couple of LEGO heads and searched through their own poop to ensure they came safely out into the toilet.
Don’t believe us – check out the video here.
Why? Dr Tagg says coins are the most commonly swallowed object by kids, but there’s very little data available on “transit time”.
The doctors worked out their Stool Hardness and Transit (SHAT) score (yes, that’s a real thing) before swallowing the head and measuring the time it took to show up again – which they labelled the Found and Retrieved Time (FART) score.
Everything is awesome?
The result? After a “robust search strategy” (we don’t even want to think about this), they discovered the average journey time for the group was 1.7 days, though one paediatrician still hadn’t found his LEGO piece after two weeks of searching.
“Perhaps one day many years from now, a gastroenterologist performing a colonoscopy will find it staring back at him,” they write.
However, they say the results should reassure parents worried about their offspring swallowing small items – and save them from a messy job.
“The authors advocate that no parent should be expected to search through their child’s faeces to prove object retrieval.”
Good to know.
