Barbecue blunder: ED removal of a pharyngeal wire bristle foreign body

Pharyngeal foreign bodies are a common emergency department complaint and have been attributed to approximately 3000 deaths annually in the United States [1]. In adults, fish bones are the most common ingested foreign body, whereas metallic foreign bodies are relatively rare [2]. In recent years, ingestion of wire brush bristles has been reported with increasing frequency [3-14]. Many times embedded wire bristles require endoscopic removal and occasionally open surgical removal [3-10,12,14]. In this case report, we describe an ingestion of a wire brush bristle associated with a barbecued steak. We believe that this is one of the first case reports describing emergency department removal of an ingested wire brush bristle.