Esophageal foreign bodies - Epidemiology and management aspects - A two years retrospective study in tertiary health care center

Objective: to review our experience with esophageal foreign bodies removal in tertiary caring health center during consecutive two years. epidemiological aspects as well as efficacy of rigid esophagoscopy in removing of fbs was assessed. patients and methods: it is retrospective descriptive study. data of consecutive one hundred and sixty patients was collected from admission record of two years from january 2008 to december 2009. age,sex,time between ingestion and endoscopy,nature and type of fbs,site of impaction and postoperative complications were noted. carl stortz's rigid esophagoscopy was used for removal of fbs under general anesthesia. analysis of data was performed manually as well as with the help of spss data manager results: one hundred and thirty patients were male 81.25% and thirty were female 18.75%. age ranged from one year to seventy five years mean age being 5 years. coins ingestion was the most common type of fbs,present in one hundred and thirty two 82.50% cases. other fbs found included,pieces of bones and meat 15 dentures 6,nails and metallic wires 5 and fish thorn were found in four patients. average time between ingestion and endoscopy was twelve hours. one hundred and twenty five 78.12% fbs were impacted at upper third,twenty five 15.62% at mid third level while remaining twelve 7.05% were removed from lower third portion of esophagus. post operative complications took placed in three patients.