DOI: 10.36347/sasjs.2020.v06i02.014

Pages: 81-86

The ingestion of esophageal foreign bodies is a particularly frequent situation in clinical practice. It interests both the pediatric population (the majority of foreign bodies ingested are between 6 months and 6 years old) as the adult population as in our clinical case. The esophageal entrapment site is the main site for ingesting foreign bodies. The majority of them pass spontaneously. The interrogation makes it possible, in most cases, to make the diagnosis of foreign bodies of the esophagus and the difficult diagnostic situations are represented by the situations where the interrogation is impossible (child, adult mentally retarded, etc.). The clinic, more or less completed with imaging, nevertheless makes it possible to make the diagnosis in the majority of cases. The therapeutic urgency depends essentially on the patient's tolerance of the foreign body but also on the nature of this body (button cell, sharp foreign bodies, etc.). The therapeutic methods are multiple (abstention, drug treatment, flexible or rigid endoscopy, surgical treatment) and depend on local management skills but also on the nature of the foreign body. The presence but also the extraction of the foreign body is a source of complications whose existence must be known for optimal care.