Appendicitis in an Infant Due to an Ingested Foreign Body

Ingested foreign bodies continue to produce a variety of problems. One of the rare problems that an ingested foreign body causes is acute appendicitis with perforation. The early writings about appendicitis centered almost exclusively around foreign bodies in the appendix. In 1735 Claudius Amyand performed the first successful appendectomy that has been recorded.³In this initial report, the etiology of the perforation of the appendix was thought to be the pin that was encrusted with stone within the appendix. In 1921, Mahoney⁶reviewed 160 years of the literature and found only 40 cases where a pin was present in the appendix. Collins⁴reported a pathological study of 50,000 appendices, of which 90% were surgically removed. He found 638 unusual foreign bodies in the appendix, including 51 instances when it was a straight pin. Martin²reviewed 1,987 surgically removed appendices and found only one case with perforation