[Right-sided recurrent retention pneumonia of changing localization after aspiration of dental impression material with almost complete casting of a segmental bronchus in a previously healthy woman]

Abstract

Aspiration of foreign bodies is extremely rare in adults but frequent in children. Foreign bodies aspired by adults are usually immediately identified and quickly removed. This, however, was not the case with the patient under report. In a women patient of 51 years of age who had so far been completely healthy, a certainly rare endobronchial foreign body remained unidentified for eighty-six days. Even in adults one must take the possibility of foreign body aspiration into consideration whenever signs are seen such as dyspnoea, recurrent pneumonias, unproductive coughing, retrosternal pain, distant cardiac murmur if no obstructive disturbance of ventilation had already existed before, and especially if there are obstructive respiratory sounds of laterally different amplitude.