Prevalence, Patterns, and Different Extraction Modalities of Foreign Body Ingestion in Patients Attending a Tertiary Care Hospital in Kashmir

Background: Foreign body (FB) ingestion is commonly encountered in medical emergencies. Unlike adults, FB ingestion is more prevalent in children.The type of FB ingestion and associated complications vary significantly.Unlike adults where FB ingestion can be accidental, FB ingestion in children is because of their tendencies to explore and put everything in their mouth with weak reflexes. In the current crossectional study, we aimed to evaluate the prevalence, risk factors, impaction site, clinical presentations, treatment modalities used to extract FBs in patients presenting FB ingested emergency. Methods: We conducted a crossectional prospective study in the department of ENT, Head and Neck Surgery,Government Medical College,and Associated Hospitals (Sri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital),Srinagar J&K. The patients admitted for FB ingestion emergency were enrolled for the current study. All the relevant demographic, clinical,and therapeutic modalities of each patient were recorded during the study.Results:The medical history of 284 subjects who presented with FB ingestion in emergency admitted between July 2019 to July 2021 was evaluated. More number of the subjects were in the age group of ≤ 5years. Unlike coin impaction in the paediatric subjects (84%), the bone chip ingestion was the most frequent impacted FB (57.7%) followed by the coin (31%) in the adult patients. The impacted meat bolus and the button battery ingestion were reported in 67% and 1.4% of the subjects respectively.The lone mortality reported in our cohort was by the ingestion of a button battery. Conclusion: The prevalent type of ingested FB in the pediatric subjects was the coin, and bone chip ingestion was more frequent FB in the adult subjects. The therapeutic intervention for FB removal primarily depends upon the type of FB ingested, and site of impaction. Battery ingestion at an early age can be fatal for the subject.