Fish hook and line impaction in the Esophagus: An unusual and interesting foreign body

Abstract

We report the case of a 28-year-old male Nigerian student, who presented in the Accident and Emergency Department of our Hospital with a five-hour history of fish hook and line impaction in the oesophagus. Patient noticed the line dangling from his mouth after swallowing a bolus of food. His initial attempts to remove it by pulling the string failed and he then resolved to swallow some more boluses in an attempt to dislodge the hook which also failed. There was an associated history of dysphagia, odynophagia and drooling of saliva. There was no difficulty in breathing, chest pain or fever. X-ray soft tissue neck done showed a radio-opaque foreign body in the oesophagus at the level of the 6th cervical vertebrate. A rigid oesophagoscopy was done to retrieve the foreign body and a size 18FR naso-gastric tube was passed to rest the oesophagus. Third day post surgery, patient was started on tubal liquid diet and the tube removed on day six and was discharged.