Foreign bodies in food and air passages

Abstract

1. The experience based on 150 cases of oesophageal and 7 cases of foreign bodies in air passages recorded. 2. Foreign bodies in the air passages constitute a real emergency requiring prompt, planned, informed removal by a competent bronchoscopist and anaesthetist. Most foreign bodies are removed successfully by this method but in certain long standing and firmly impacted ones a thoracotomy offers the only safe approach. 3. Oesophageal foreign bodies either pass naturally or the impacted ones are removed endoscopically. In few cases where the foreign body is firmly wedged in cervical or thoracic osophagus a cervical or transthoracic oesophagotomy is done.