Not a little number of patients accidentally swallow PTP (press through package or blister package of tablets) pieces. PTP pieces account for about ten percent of all foreign bodies in the esophagus in Japan.
Author reported 24 cases of misswallowing of package pieces of medical tablets (23 cases swallowed PTP and one case swallowed SP-strip package-) treated in his clinic during the period of 1966 to 1987, and discussed the ingestion of PTP pieces by means of case-control study.
The results were summarized as follows.
1) The patients, who misswallowed the package pieces of tablets, had no significant property in their physical state and the manner of internal use. The ingestion of PTP pieces, as a“human error”through the carelessness, happened in the ordinary patients who took the ordinary medical tablets in the ordinary manners.
2) The background of PTP ingestion was supposed to be the decline of psychological importance of the internal use.
3) Modification of the package of tablets or change of the present dispensing system may prevent the ingestion of PTP pieces.
