What are the chances? — Teens vocal cords act like coin slot in worst-case ingestion accident Luckily his symptoms were relatively mild, but doctors noted ulceration of his airway.
Beth Mole – Apr 8, 2024 10:56 pm UTC EnlargeGetty | Archive Photos reader comments 69
Most of the time, when kids accidentally gulp down a non-edible object, it travels toward the stomach. In the best-case scenarios for these unfortunate events, it’s a small, benign object that safely sees itself out in a day or two. But in the worst-case scenarios, it can go down an entirely different path.
That was the case for a poor teen in California, who somehow swallowed a quarter. The quarter didnt head down the esophagus and toward the stomach, but veered into the airway, sliding passed the vocal cords like they were a vending-machine coin slot. Enlarge / Radiographs of the chest (Panel A, postero- anterior view) and neck (Panel B, lateral view). Removal with optical forceps (Panel C and Video 1), and reinspection of ulceration (Panel D, asterisks)NEJM, Hsue and Patel, 2024
In a clinical report published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors who treated the 14-year-old boy reported how they foundand later retrievedthe quarter from its unusual and dangerous resting place. Once it passed the vocal cords and the glottis, the coin got lodged in the subglottis, a small region between the vocal cords and the trachea. Advertisement
Luckily, when the boy arrived at the emergency department, his main symptoms were hoarseness and difficulty swallowing. He was surprisingly breathing comfortably and without drooling, they noted. But imaging quickly revealed the danger his airway was in when the vertical coin lit up his scans.
“Airway foreign bodiesespecially those in the trachea and larynxnecessitate immediate removal to reduce the risk of respiratory compromise,” they wrote in the NEJM report.
The teen was given general anesthetic while doctors used long, optical forceps, guided by a camera, to pluck the coin from its snug spot. After grabbing the coin, they re-inspected the boy’s airway noting ulcerations on each side matching the coin’s ribbed edge.
After the coin’s retrieval, the boy’s symptoms improved and he was discharged home, the doctors reported. reader comments 69 Beth Mole Beth is Ars Technicas Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes. Advertisement Channel Ars Technica ← Previous story Next story → Related Stories Today on Ars
