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Review
. 2018 Apr 5:19:400-405.
doi: 10.12659/ajcr.908373.

Cervical Esophagotomy for Foreign Body Extraction: A Case Report and Extensive Literature Review of the Last 20 Years

Pasquale Cianci  1 , Nicola Tartaglia  1 , Amedeo Altamura  1 , Alessandra Di Lascia  1 , Alberto Fersini  1 , Vincenzo Neri  1 , Antonio Ambrosi  1
Affiliations
Review

Cervical Esophagotomy for Foreign Body Extraction: A Case Report and Extensive Literature Review of the Last 20 Years

Pasquale Cianci et al. Am J Case Rep. .

Abstract

BACKGROUND Voluntary and involuntary ingestion of foreign bodies is a common condition; in most cases they pass through the digestive tract, but sometimes they stop, creating emergency situations for the patient. We report a case of meat bolus with cartilaginous component impacted in the cervical esophagus, with a brief literature review. CASE REPORT A 64-year-old man came to our attention for retention in the cervical esophagus of a piece of meat accidentally swallowed during lunch. After a few attempts of endoscopic removal carried out previously in other hospitals, the patient has been treated by us with a cervical esophagotomy and removal of the foreign body, without any complications. We checked the database of PubMed, Scopus, and the Cochrane Library from January 2007 to January 2017 in order to verify the presence of randomized controlled trials, clinical trials, retrospective studies, and case series regarding the use of the cervical esophagotomy for the extraction of foreign bodies impacted in the esophagus. CONCLUSIONS The crucial point is to differentiate the cases that must be immediately treated from those requiring simple observation. Endoscopic treatment is definitely the first therapeutic option, but in case of failure of this approach, in our opinion, cervical esophagotomy could be a safe, easy, viable, durable approach for the extraction of foreign bodies impacted in the cervical esophagus. Our review does not have the purpose of providing definitive conclusions but is intended to represent a starting point for subsequent studies.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: None declared

Conflict of interest

None.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Endoscopic image showing how the cartilage component of the foreign body is preponderant and causing a pressure sore on the esophageal mucosa.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
CT images show the foreign body in the sagittal (A) and axial (B) plane.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Intraoperative images showing the extraction of the foreign body (A), the final suturing of esophagotomy (B), and the surgical specimen (C).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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