Late diagnosis and surgical treatment of bronchial bean aspiration - case report

Asphyxiation by an inhaled foreign body is a leading cause of accidental death among children younger than 4years. Delay in diagnosis, as well as the type of foreign body is a risk factor related to mortality and invasive procedures like tracheostomy and thorachotomy. Here, we report a case of two year old girl admitted to our hospital 48hours after bean aspiration. She underwent rigid bronchoscopy under general anesthesia with ventilatory support, tracheotomy followed by thoracothomy and bronchotomy as final way of foreign body extraction. During the procedure she had hypoxic cardiac arrest and was successfully reanimated. It took 10days to wean her from mechanical ventilation and 10 more at the pulmology department before she was discharged from hospital without neurological complications.