Since yesterday there are many people who have read on Facebook warning that children should not eat nuts until age five, talking about David's case. With such a sentence, I thought, the number of children allergic to nuts will probably increase, so I went to the page they linked to read the news and find out what had really happened. To give the same notice to all the fathers and mothers who read us we tell you today the tragic story of David, the two-year-old boy who is almost in a coma because of an almond.
As we read in El Mundo, it all started five months ago when the family was celebrating at home. David was a year and a half by then, and among what was on the table to eat took an almond. He ate it and went to the sofa to see the drawings while the elders had just prepared everything. There coughed a little, but nothing that scared any relatives.
A few days later he started with more cough in what was thought to be a cold. Not only did it not improve, but it got worse and worse and the picture was diagnosed as having pneumonia. Time passed and the boy did not improve. When it was three months since the beginning of everything, seeing that the fever was still coming and going despite antibiotics, the parents dedicated themselves to trying to remember if there was something that responded to their condition. It was then that they thought about the day David ate an almond and then coughed a little. When discussing it with the doctors they decided to take it to the operating room and do a bronchoscopy (insert a probe with a camera and other tools to be able to even intervene if necessary) and that was when they found what caused it all: a piece of almond that had produced an unrecoverable infection.
The lung was full of pus
The almond rotted inside and caused an infection that affected the entire lung. The doctors tried to extract the almond at the same time, but apparently it was the same cause of the infection that in some way contained it, as a plug, and when moving the almond the pus spread, the lung was perforated and the boy suffered a cardiac arrest. They needed 28 minutes to resuscitate him and this caused serious neurological problems.
Apparently, David opens his eyes, but has no vision. It has a rigid body and is unable to move. He doesn't speak, and he doesn't eat, and everything because of a dried fruit, that hard and small food that was not aimed at him, but that he decided to try.
When can a child eat nuts?
Actually since six months, but obviously not whole. For some years now we know that the foods that give the most allergy (and the nuts are theirs) are better tolerated when a child eats them soon, with complementary feeding. This does not mean that they should eat them at six months, but it does not matter if with 8 months, for example, they eat a cookie or a cake that has as an ingredient some dried fruit (here we talk, for example, about an investigation in which it was seen that when babies between 4 and 11 months ate peanut the risk of allergy was much lower than when they did not eat them).
Another thing is to talk about the age at which they can eat something small and hard, such as a dried fruit, a candy that must be chewed, etc. We talk about ages between 5 and 6 years old, a little as our common sense tells us. If our child is one of those who choke easily, we can wait for six or seven years. If they manage well with food, it may be enough with five years.
The Spanish Association of Primary Care Pediatrics (AEPap) explains in this regard:
It is absolutely forbidden to give children under 5 or 6 years of age nuts, because if you choke on them, it can either suffocate or produce a lung injury due to the oil that these products distil. In any case, you would need urgent treatment, first for you and then in the ER. If you have nuts in your home, make sure they are not within your child's reach.
In any case, it is important to try not to do two things at once: running and eating is not a good idea (Typically, the child is having a snack in the park while running and playing). And on the other hand, if we have small children at home, as in the case of David, we must be very careful with everything they put in their mouths. It can be an almond that can be sucked, it can be a popcorn (two years ago an 18-month-old girl who drew one died), it can be a coin and it can be a pile, which is also very dangerous.
Anyway, in a few days we will explain what are the foods with which children choke the most and, consequently, the most dangerous, because more than one will get a surprise (sausages are among them).
