Vol.99 No.10 contentsPRACTICA OTO-RHINO-LARYNGOLOGICA
Vol. 99 No. 10 October 2006
A Case of Tracheobronchial Foreign Body
Diagnosed by Multi-detector Row CT
Eiji Kondo, Koichi Tamura, Hironori Akizuki,
Katsushi Miyazaki and Noriaki Takeda
(University of Tokushima School of Medicine)
Hideyuki Nakagawa
(National Hospital Organization Kochi National Hospital)
We report the case of a 6-month-old baby with a radiolucent tracheobronchial foreign body. Multi-detector row CT (MDCT) imaging was obtained without anesthesia and multi-planar reconstruction (MPR) imaging, three-dimensional CT (3D-CT) imaging, and virtual bronchoscopy (VB) imaging were reconstructed. MPR, 3D-CT, and VB imaging were useful not only for diagnosis of the radiolucent bronchial foreign body, but also for the pre-operative evaluation of its size and location. A piece of cellophane packaging was then safely removed from the bronchus using flexible bronchoscopy under general anesthesia. The present case suggests that MDCT imaging is necessary as a routine procedure in the diagnosis and pre-operative evaluation of tracheobronchial foreign body.
Key words: multi-detector row CT, radiolucent tracheobronchial foreign body, pre-operative evaluation