Foreign bodies in oesophagus in children: our expreience in a tertiary care hospital

A Foreign body is an object or substance foreign to the location where it is found. Foreign body ingestion is a common occurrence and carries significant morbidity. The increased incidence of swallowing foreign bodies in children could be due to their natural propensity to gain knowledge by putting things in their mouth, inability to masticate well and inadequate control of deglutition as well as tendency to cry, cough or play during eating. The most common foreign body seen was coin (70%), followed by metallic foreign body (13.33%), and meat bone (10%). Others were battery and vegetative foreign body. In our study, foreign bodies were more common in <4 years of age (60%), followed by 5-8 years of age (30%).There were no complications seen in our study.