Foreign Airway Bodies in Children: Experience of Pediatric Emergency Department

Laryngo-tracheo-bronchial foreign bodies aspiration in children is both frequent and serious; potentially life-threatening.

Through this retrospective study, we report the experience of the pediatric emergency department of the Mohammed VI University Hospital in Marrakech and we trace the epidemiological and evolutionary profile of this pathology.

We included all patients under the age of 15 years old admitted to the pediatric emergency room for foreign body inhalation and who had a bronchoscopy between February 2014 and December 2019.

The patients eligible for this study were 171, 58% were boys. The average age of the children was 4.46 years. The average consultation time was relatively long (16 days), however 44% of patients consulted within 24 hours of the incident. The mean time between admission and removal of foreign body was between 2 and 3 days (2.69 days) with 64% of extractions made within the first 24 hours after admission. We observed a slight predominance of plant foreign bodies (45%) of which 63% were peanuts. Penetration syndrome was present in 81% of cases. The clinical condition of the child on arrival was very varied: from a strictly normal examination in 63% of cases to a state of respiratory distress with impaired consciousness in 5.2% of cases. The chest x-ray was normal in approximately 60% of cases. Rigid bronchoscopy was performed in all of our patients under general anesthesia. The extraction of foreign bodies was carried out mostly in one piece (166 patients). Among the complications linked to the stagnation of the foreign body in the bronchi we noticed: 30 cases of intra-bronchial granulomas, 17 cases of atelectasis and 06 cases of localized bronchiectasis.

These results reflect the severity of this preventable accident. Raising awareness among parents remains an essential way to avoid morbidity and mortality linked to its complications.