A CASE OF ANTRAL FOREIGN BODY FOUND ACCIDENTALLY DUARING THE OPERATION OF MAXILLARY SINUSITIS

Abstract

A case of foreign body in the maxillary sinus (a disposable cigarette pipe made of plastcs) is reported. This foreign body was found accidentally during the operation of chronic sinusitis.
The patient was a 32-year-old man. He had been suffered from chronic sinusitis complaining of a nasal obstruction with a frontal headache for 12 years. About five years ago, the 6 th tooth of his right maxilla was extracted because of the caries. Some time after this extraction, he stuck the disposable cigarette pipe into a space of extracted tooth involuntarily. When this accident occurred, he was getting drunk and therefore he misunderstood that the cigarette pipe was misswallowed. This cigarette pipe could be introduced into the right maxillary sinus through the oromaxillary fistula which was madeby the extraction of the 6 th tooth. This foreign body had not been found until the operation. The maincause of this could be that the presumable symptoms of the foreign body introduction was masked by the preceding severe chronic sinusitis. And also the other causes were no occurrence of acute excerbation of sinusitis and the difficulty in the detection of this foreign body by X-ray because of its radiotranslucency. We found no similar report of foreign body in the maxillary sinus in the literature.