Christmas Bow Tragedies

Plastic laryngeal foreign bodies in children: A diagnostic challenge

“…One approach reported in the literature that has been used successfully to aid in the diagnosis of aspirated plastic foreign bodies is to add barium to plastic products to make them radioopaque. Such a technique was successfully implemented by the 3M Company (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company) after it was reported that their products had resulted in two deaths by aspiration [4,15]. As plastic becomes more common in the home environment, physicians must have a higher index of suspicion even in the face of subtle symptoms and normal plain radiographs.…”

Foreign Body Aspiration: Imaging Aspects

“…A foreign body can cause fatal asphyxia and death when there is complete obstruction of the major airways (Buntain et al 1979;Black et al 1984Black et al , 1994Byard 1994;Bhana et al 2000;Ciftci et al 2003). This occurrence is rare, although it was described in 5-7.5 % of foreign body aspiration cases in one report (Menendez et al 1991;Foltran et al 2013).…”