Oral surgery : a text book of diseases of the mouth intended chiefly for the use of students of dentistry / by Edmund W. Roughton.

  • Roughton, Edmund W.
Date:
[between 1890 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Oral surgery : a text book of diseases of the mouth intended chiefly for the use of students of dentistry / by Edmund W. Roughton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    act of swallowing, or when such things are being held in the mouth. If the substance is light, it will probably remain free in the trachea, floating up and down with the current of air, but if heavy it will become impacted in the trachea or one of the bronchi. Elongated bodies such as a piece of pencil, more often find their way into the left bronchus, as its axis is more in line with the trachea, whereas rounded bodies more often enter the right bronchus as its lumen at the tracheal bifurcation is larger. The symptoms are divisible into the same stages as those of laryngeal foreign bodies. At first there is an attack of urgent dyspnoea upon the subsidence of which the most characteristic symptom is paroxysmal suffocative cough and dyspnoea in consequence of the foreign body being driven up against the glottis. These attacks of cough occur only when the body is free to move in the trachea. When it has become impacted in one of the bronchi, it prevents the air entering the corres- ponding lung, diminishing or abolishing the respiratory murmur. If the foreign body acts as a valve, and allows air to emerge from the lung whilst preventing any entering it, the result is collapse of the lung. If the foreign body remain long in the bronchus it is apt to set up bronchitis, pneumonia, or abscess in the lung ; sometimes it may become encysted and do no farther harm. Treatment. Inversion and shaking may be tried in the first instance, but everything should be ready for immediate tracheotomy should the foreign body become impacted in the glottis. Probably the best treatment is to perform tracheo- tomy in every case, as soon as the patient comes under observation. It often happens that when the trachea is opened, the 'foreign body is expelled through the wound, or