FACEM Dr Andrew Tagg and the team at DontForgetTheBubbles.com have been all over the news recently, and it is all thanks to lego.
The team recently had a paper published by the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health that answered the burning question - how long does it take for an ingested lego head to pass?
Download the paper
All of a sudden, Dr Tagg, who is on the Victoria Faculty Board and a member of ACEM’s Publications Steering Group, was fielding media queries from across Australia and the world.
Dr Tagg and the study have appeared in media outlets The Guardian, Herald Sun, BBC, Forbes, Canadian radio, the ABC, 3AW, Channel 10’s The Project and the New York Post, and in The New England Journal of Medicine.
The study was also mentioned in the opening monologue on the The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. (2 mins 47 secs - 3 mins 02 secs)
“It’s a bit of fun in the run up to Christmas,” Dr Tagg said of the media exposure.
When asked if this was “hard science”, Dr Tagg replied: “Of course it’s not. With such a small sample size it is important that you don’t extrapolate the data to the entire population of Lego swallowers. Anecdata from Twitter suggests that a large number of people accidentally ingested bits of Lego throughout their life with no adverse effects.
“It is also worth noting that most people who swallow Lego are children, not fully grown adults. Data that is applicable to the adult population may well not be applicable to children.”
Dr Tagg has written about the whirlwind week on his blog.
