A tale of a denture.
A lady was admitted for accidentally swallowing her two-premolar tooth denture. According to her , the wire piece had broken before and presently only supported by a wire on a single side. She was using this now loose denture for quite some time till 3 days ago while washing her mouth it dislodge and was swallowed accidentally.
An chest Xray showed it to be lying within the lower oesophagus but within the thoracic cavity.
Do you see it?
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A closer look shows a W-shape wire piece sitting horizontally.
Removing it surgically was also not going to be easy and would have high possible complications due to its position. Removing it endoscopically would be the best option but had failed 2 previous attempts.
Today, we decided to rescope her before taking her to the operating theatre and attempt to remove the denture. She had 2 attempts done before and was reported to be embedded to the wall of the oesophagus. We somehow, skillfully managed to remove the denture! Yahooo!
Moral of the story:
Please, when something is defunct or loose, don’t use it. And as typical Malaysian, don’t wait till something occurs, or assume that nothing would happen as nothing had happen so far, as it may be a high price to pay or may even cost your life!
August 29th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Good reminder….thanks.( need to tighten some loose body parts.)