3D-CT diagnosis for ingested foreign bodies

Ingested foreign bodies can be hard to diagnose but cannot be missed. We re port two cases where helical computed tomography (three-dimensional compute d tomography) was used for the effective preoperative diagnosis (swallowed fish bone-induced perforation of sigmold colon and a case of ileus caused b y ingested PTP [press through package]). Other traditional diagnostic metho ds could not identify the foreign bodies. Three-dimensional computed tomogr aphy is useful for the diagnosis of foreign body ingestion and should be us ed for the difficult cases, (Am J Emerg Med 2000;18:192-193. Copyright (C) 2000 by W.B. Saunders Company).