Teen’s vocal cords act like coin slot in worst-case ingestion accident
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Most of the time, when kids accidentally gulp down a non-edible object, it travels toward the stomach. In the best-case scenarios for these unfortunate events, it's a small, benign object that safely sees itself out in a day or two. But in the worst-case scenarios, it can go down an entirely different path.
That was the case for a poor teen in California, who somehow swallowed a quarter. The quarter didn't head down the esophagus and toward the stomach, but veered into the airway, sliding past the vocal cords like they were a vending-machine coin slot.
Radiographs of the chest (Panel A, postero- anterior view) and neck (Panel B, lateral view). Removal with optical forceps (Panel C and Video 1), and reinspection of ulceration (Panel D, asterisks) (credit: NEJM, Hsue and Patel, 2024)
In a clinical report published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors who treated the 14-year-old boy reported how they found-and later retrieved-the quarter from its unusual and dangerous resting place. Once it passed the vocal cords and the glottis, the coin got lodged in the subglottis, a small region between the vocal cords and the trachea.