By Peter Lloyd for MailOnline
Published: 12:10 GMT, 18 February 2019 | Updated: 12:11 GMT, 18 February 2019
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A three-year-old girl swallowed a necklace and, almost literally, ended up with a heart of gold.
The unidentified youngster, from San Diego, California, was presented to her local emergency department after she accidentally ingested the metal pendant.
An x-ray of her chest showed the item in the proximal thoracic oesophagus - the muscular tube which connects the throat to the stomach.
Incredibly, it had formed a perfect heart-shape in her chest cavity.
Heart-shaped: A radiograph confirmed heart-shaped foreign body in the thoracic esophagus
As reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, the patient was taken to the operating room to undergo rigid endoscopy.
There, the necklace was removed in full.
Further inspection of the esophagus showed minor abrasions of the esophageal mucosa, but nothing serious or requiring further treatment.
After the procedure, the patient recovered and was discharged home.
Typically, children aged one to thee-years-old are most likely to swallow foreign objects.
While some pass
