Abstract
Various methods, instruments and skill have to be resorted to for the extraction of foreign bodies from the ear, esophagus, superior and inferior air passages. The authors recently experienced a case of a foreign body (hollow glass ball, 8×6.5 mm) aspirated into the right bronchus. The patient was a girl aged 2, and extraction had been tried by several specialists under inferior bronchoscopy without success. The foreign body was tightly wedged in the lumen of the right bronchus 8 cm below the superior margin of the sternum, the wall of which was oedematously swollen. She was brought to the authors' clinic after 7 days had passed. Having tried all methods unsuccessfully, the authors thought of the suction method by chance and succeeded in extracting the foi-eign body.
The method consists in approaching and sucking the foreign body with a rubber tube (5.5 mm in diameter) fitted to the tip of the suction tube inserted through the Bruninings' fenestrated inner tube. The authors have also proved that this method is applicable with far more ease to cases of foreign bodies such as beans, trisects and similar bodies in the external auditory canal. Kubo (Fukuoka)
