Missing Dentures Found Stuck in Man's Throat 8 Days
After Surgery
Here’s why it’s best to remove false teeth before
surgery: You just might swallow them.
A medical journal is reporting the case of a 72-
year-old British man whose partial dentures apparently
got stuck in his throat during surgery and weren’t
discovered for eight days.
The man went to the emergency room because he
was having a hard time swallowing and was coughing up
blood. Doctors ordered a chest X-ray, diagnosed him with
what they wrongly thought was pneumonia and sent him
home with antibiotics and steroids. It took another
hospital visit before another X-ray revealed the problem:
His dentures — a metal roof plate and three false teeth —
lodged at the top of his throat.
The man thought his dentures were lost while he
was in the hospital for minor surgery.
How it happened isn’t exactly clear, but a halfdozen previous cases have been documented of dentures
going astray as surgical patients were put to sleep.
Placing a tube in a patient’s airway can push
things where they don’t belong, said Dr. Mary Dale
Peterson, an anesthesiologist at Driscoll Children’s
Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Besides dentures, retainers, loose teeth and
tongue piercings can cause problems, said Peterson, who
is president-elect of the American Society of
Anesthesiologists. Before a child’s surgery, she’ll pull a
very loose tooth and tell the patient to expect a visit from
the tooth fairy. "We can make a nice game of it."
In the British case, after the dentures were
removed, the man had several bouts of bleeding that
required more surgery before he recovered. The journal
article didn’t identify the man or the hospital involved. […]
Available at: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/man-s-missingdentures-were-found-stuck-his-throat-8-n1041641 (edited).