ENDOSCOPY IN THE TREATMENT OF ESOPHAGEAL FOREIGN-BODIES

We have studied by means of flexible endoscopy 298 patients with a suspicion of esophageal foreign body. Only a third of them were proven, prevailing in women older than 60 years. We verify the meaning of some symptoms (dysphagia, odynophagia, retrosternal pain, and pharyngeal parestesias) according to the presence or not of the foreign body, and we confirm its general tendency to locate in the proximal esophagus and Killian's ring becoming nailed or impacted in a high percentage (73.8%) of cases. The lesions caused by such foreign bodies were slight in general, and no special treatment was required. The incidence of serious complications was very low (0.97%). The sucess of treatment by flexible endoscopy was 92.3%, making this the best method for extracting the foreign bodies of the upper digestive tract.