A 12-year-old boy had a plastic pen cap lodged in his left main airway for about six months. His family had seen him choke on it but was reassured when a chest X-ray looked normal. A 23-year-old mechanic had a metal spring in his right airway that was first mistaken for a flaw on the image. An 82-year-old smoker being checked for a suspicious lung nodule turned out to have a chicken bone in his left main bronchus.
They are three of eight patients described in a case series published April 29 in Case Reports in Pulmonology. In every case, the object turned up by accident, during airway exams ordered for chronic cough, pneumonia that would not clear, enlarged chest lymph nodes or suspected cancer.
