RESEARCH ARTICLE


Foreign Bodies in Non-Life Threatening Locations: A Risk Analysis of Nose and Ears Foreign Bodies in European Children



Dario Gregori1, §, *, Francesca Foltran1, Giselle Cuestas2, Hugo Rodriguez2, §, Desiderio Passali3, Paola Berchialla4, §
1 Labs of Epidemiological Methods and Biostatistics, Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, University of Padova, Italy
2 Endoscopy, Hospital de Pediatría Juan P. Garrahan, Garrahan, Buenos Aires, Argentina Buenos Aires, Argentina
3 Ear, Nose, and Throat Clinic, Policlinico Le Scotte, University of Siena, Italy
4 Department of Public Health and Microbiology, University of Torino, Italy

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2012
Volume: 6
First Page: 23
Last Page: 28
Publisher Id: TOPEDJ-6-23
DOI: 10.2174/1874309901206010023

Article History:

Received Date: 11/01/2012
Revision Received Date: 15/02/2012
Acceptance Date: 15/02/2012
Electronic publication date: 4/5/2012
Collection year: 2012

© 2012 Gregori et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                                              §                         Dario Gregori, Hugo rodriguez and Paola Berchialla are Guest Editors for the Issue.                                         * Address correspondence to this author at the Labs of Epidemiological Methods and Biostatistics, Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, University of Padova, Via Loredan 18, 35131 Padova, Italy; Tel: +39 049 8275384; Fax: +39 02 700445089; dario.gregori@unipd.it


Abstract

Children with a foreign body (FB) in either the ear or nose commonly present to the hospital. We present a retrospective series of 1186 European cases of FB in ears or nose in children younger 14 years old, classified following the International Classification of Disease (ICD931 and ICD932). Data were collected through a case report form (CRF) during three years (2000-2002) according to four main characteristics (socio-demographic, ergonomic, related to the hospital's management and to the circumstance of the injury). Overall, 610 (53%) sampled children were males. In 704 (71%) of cases, FBs were inorganic and among themabout 36% were balls, marbles or beads. The study investigates FBs featuresand injuries circumstances that are associated to prolonged hospitalization and complications. The most dangerous FBs resulted in objects with rigid or semi-rigid consistency.

Keywords: Foreign body (FB), children, chocking, ears, nose.