Illinois man undergoes procedure to remove dental drill bit
A man in Illinois has undergone a procedure to retrieve a drill bit after inhaling it during a routine dental appointment.
Tom Joszi, 60, went to the dentist to have a filling. During the procedure, he accidentally swallowed a drill bit, which later became lodged in his lung. At first, Mr Joszi didn’t realise that he had inhaled the inch-long part and he admitted that he didn’t feel it going down. At the time, he let out a cough, but it wasn’t until he had a CT scan that he realised that the bit had got stuck in the lung.
Mr Joszi’s dentist informed him that he had swallowed a small part of the tool and doctors later suggested that as he inhaled just before coughing, the drill bit fell deep into the throat. The CT scan image showed an inch-long, pointed drill bit lodged in the lower lobe of the right lung.
Dr Abdul Alraiyes, from Aurora Medical Centre in Wisconsin, explained that the drill had fallen too deep to reach it with a normal scope, which meant that the team had to try a different device, which is usually used in the detection of cancer, to try to remove the foreign object from Mr Joszi’s lung.
Thankfully, using scan images, doctors successfully navigated the airways and pulled the drill bit out. Without the ingenuity and quick thinking displayed by the team, Mr Joszi would have needed surgery to recover the component.
After the procedure, Mr Joszi said that he had never been so happy to see the doctor standing there holding a plastic container with the drill bit inside. He has now taken the troublesome part home and plans to display it on a shelf as a memento.
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