Foreign Bodies in the Respiratory and Gastrointestinal Tracts in Children

Infants’ natural curiosity and experimentation often cause them to be patients in hospital emergency units with foreign bodies in their nose, ears, respiratory or gastrointestinal tracts. Such patients call for a careful assessment of their clinical status, the level of emergency as well as potential complications and require the attention of a host of medical specialists – an otolaryngologist, bronchoscopist, anaesthesiologist and intensivist, X-ray radiologist. Amongst the notorious variety of foreign bodies e.g. coins, buttons, small toys, seeds and nuts, safety pins etc., two stand out as particularly dangerous because of their chemical toxicity, namely batteries and small magnets and they have to be categorically urgently removed from whichever part of the body they happen to be in. Foreign bodies in the larynx and the trachea also require immediate action because of the high mortality rate in a short time following an incident where no adequate measures have been taken.

Keywords: foreign body, children.