Foreign Body Aspiration

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[edit] Foreign body aspiration

In young children or in disabled older patients, aspiration of a foreign body can be a problem, as they cannot communicate well. In a toddler it may be that they have played with a peanut and part of it suddenly got "breathed in" with the airflow (=aspirated). The peanut particle gets as far as it can, usually to the level of a bronchiole (that's a side branch of a bronchial tube).

The air behind this small air way duct gets absorbed (called"atelectasis") and the lung tissue collapses in that region. The foreign body (in this case a peanut particle) becomes the focus of where bacteria multiply and aspiration pneumonia starts in this location.

With swift action on behalf of the medical profession the patient is referred to a lung specialist (respirologist) who will do an emergency bronchoscopy with a fiberoptic or rigid bronchoscope and remove the foreign body (in this case a peanut is being removed from a bronchial tube). Chest physiotherapy is done following this to re-expand the lung, and the patient will be fine. Without swift action very difficult, often life threatening situations can occur and sometimes a chest surgeon has to cut out the diseased and scarred up portion of the lung to stop a vicious cycle of scarring and chronic infection (Ref. 2, p. 1766).

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References:

1. James Chin et al., Editors: Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, 17th edition, 2000, American Public Health Association.

2. Behrman: Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics, 16th ed., 2000, W. B. Saunders Company

4. Noble: Textbook of Primary Care Medicine, 3rd ed.,2001 Mosby, Inc.

5. Abeloff: Clinical Oncology, 2nd ed.,2000,Churchill Livingstone, Inc.

6. Ferri: Ferri's Clinical Advisor: Instant Diagnosis and Treatment, 2004 ed., Copyright © 2004 Mosby, Inc.

7. Rakel: Conn's Current Therapy 2004, 56th ed., Copyright © 2004 Elsevier