In the North, a 7-year-old boy died of cardiac arrest after trying to swallow a Babybel whole. Emergency services were unable to revive him.
It’s child’s play that turns to drama, which was revealed by The voice of the North. Tuesday, October 25 in an outdoor center in Sancourt, a town near Cambrai, a 7-year-old boy died following a cardiac arrest after having ingested a whole Babybel.
A simple challenge between children that goes wrong
The starting point of the accident is at the lunch break of a leisure center, which brings together the children of the town during the All Saints holidays. According to the first elements of the investigation, the victim and a comrade then voluntarily embark on a challenge, that of eating the famous round cheese on the menu of the day, whole.
Faced with the first signs of suffocation of the young victim, the staff of the leisure center immediately took the little boy aside to provide him with first aid, in particular using a defibrillator, and to avoid traumatizing the other children.
Dispatched to the scene, the firefighters and the SMUR, were unable to revive the child in cardiac arrest, despite “more than 45 minutes” cardiac massage.
What to do in case of choking of a child?
The drama, as shocking as it is, is an opportunity to recall the emergency actions to be taken in the event of a child choking; leading cause of cardio-respiratory arrest in children under 8 years old.
According to the advice of Dr Kierzek, emergency doctor and medical director of Doctissimo, when a child chokes, there are two scenarios
- The child can talk and cough, the air can still circulate. In this case it is preferable to do nothing because there is no vital emergency. Making an inopportune gesture could displace the foreign body which partially blocks the trachea and this risks obstructing it completely. Possibly, the child can thus consult, and pass a fibroscopy to remove the element which choked it, if it did not spit it out;
- The child can no longer speak or breathe and turns blue. You have to react quickly. The method consists of 5 big slaps between the shoulder blades while the child leans forward;
- If this technique is not enough to spill the beans, after five slaps, you have to go to the Heimlich maneuver, to make a piston. That is to say, wrap your arms around the person who is choking by putting yourself behind their back, joining your hands at the level of their stomach and pressing strongly towards yourself and upwards to create excess pressure at the level of the diaphragm. and allow the child to expel the foreign body.
At the same time, it is obviously necessary to warn the emergency services and not to stop these two techniques until the person spits out the piece.