This contribution to the already voluminous literature on the subject of colonic foreign bodies is designed not only to present a few rather unusual examples but to emphasize the value of regional anesthesia in the extraction of large impacted foreign bodies from below.
Case 1.
—A boy, aged 5, aspirated a straight, glass-headed pin 11/4 inches long, the pin entering a bronchus. During attempts at removal, the pin was coughed up and swallowed. Its slow passage through the alimentary tract was followed by daily fluoroscopic visualization and after some days it came to rest in the right lower quadrant of the abdomen (fig. 1). Three weeks after the first entry of the foreign body, the appendix, with the pin resting inside, was removed, there being no evidence of injury to the tract. The convalescence was uneventful.The predilection of the patent appendix for foreign bodies is well known. Several surgeons