Foreign body ingestion in children attending Rapareen Teaching Hospital: a single-centre experience

Introduction
Ingestion of foreign bodies is a significant problem among children, which necessitates early intervention and may lead to serious morbidity and even mortality.

Aim
To estimate the pattern of foreign body ingestion among children and identify the role of management and its outcomes in relation to the type and site of foreign bodies.

Material and methods
Our study was carried out on patients who attended the Emergency Department of the Rapareen Teaching Hospital for Paediatrics in Erbil city and were referred to the Paediatric Gastroenterology Unit during between March 2019 and January 2023. All clinical and demographic data were entered and then analysed using SPSS.

Results
Fifty-four patients visited or were admitted to the Rapareen Hospital Emergency Department with a history of ingestion of foreign bodies, with a median age of 4 years (mean age: 4.14 ±2.15 years) and a nearly equal male-to-female ratio (1.16 : 1). Most of the foreign bodies were radiopaque, and the majority were located in the oesophagus at the time of initial presentation. Disc batteries (27.8%) were the commonest foreign body, followed by coins (20.4%), of which 66.7% were retrieved endoscopically, while 4 patients needed surgical intervention. Cross-tabulation reveals a significant association between the site of materials and the early presentation, type of object, and outcome. Also, a significant association was established between the type of foreign body and gender, age, time of presentation, and outcome.

Conclusions
The button battery was the most common foreign body ingested among the children, and the majority were located in the oesophagus and extracted by endoscopy.