Button battery ingestion: a solution to a management dilemma.

There is a dilemma in the management of ingested intact button batteries in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract distal to the oesophagus: whether to do an emergency laparotomy or to adopt a wait-and-watch policy. In this case report an effective, safe, and quick method of GI lavage was used and a button battery was expelled successfully from the stomach without resorting to laparotomy or endoscopy.