Abstract
This paper presents 2 infant cases of foreign body in the air passage, which were treated at our department during the last year and where a long time elapsed before an operation could be performed. One case involved a soybean, which was a moving object and undetected by X-ray but was diagnosed by CT scan. The other case involved a paper clip, and the first examiner failed to ascertain that a foreign body was swallowed before he gave the patient a chest X-ray. The first case took 9 days and the second case took 7 days to operation. In both cases, we performed the extraction of the foreign body with a ventilation bronchoscope under general anesthesia. As the soybean had become moist and soft during its stay in the trachea, it broke into pieces as soon as we touched it. We carefully removed all the pieces with aspiration. The recovery went well in both cases. We should always recognize the risk of death caused by foreign bodies in the air passage, and we must educate the general public as to their danger.
