KEY POINTS

  • Tom Jozsi accidentally inhaled an inch-long metal drill without realizing it
  • Medics considered removing part of his lung due to the drill head's tricky position
  • The drill bit was extracted using a robotic ion catheter

An Illinois man had a piece of a dental drill stuck inside his lungs for almost a week after he accidentally sucked it in during a procedure.

Tom Jozsi, a 60-year-old maintenance worker reportedly inhaled an inch-long metal component of a tooth-hollowing instrument after the part broke off while he was getting a tooth filled last month, NY Post reported.

"I didn’t really even feel it going down. All I felt was a cough," Jozsi recollected. He was shifted to the Aurora Medical Center in Kenosha where they found out that the drill head had got embedded deep down the right lobe of his lung.

The doctors determined that Jozsi inhaled just before he coughed, sending the instrument deep down, traveling past the larynx and trachea. "When they did the CT scan they realized, ‘You didn’t swallow it. You inhaled it,’" Jozsi said, Miami Herald reported.

Dr. Abdul Alraiyes who treated him at Aurora Medical Center said the bit was lodged so deep that normal scopes couldn’t reach the tricky location. The medics then considered removing a part of his lung as they feared the interloper can damage the surrounding tissue during the extraction. "What happens if he can’t get it out? And really, the answer was part of my lung was going to have to get removed," Jozsi said.

Fortunately, Jozsi did not have to face the ordeal as the medical team successfully extracted the drill bit using a robotic ion catheter originally designed for the early detection of cancer. The catheter helped them to navigate the narrow airways and to pull out the lodged instrument without causing any injury to the patient, according to a video of the novel procedure posted online.

"I was never so happy as when I opened my eyes, and I saw him with a smile under that mask shaking a little plastic container with the tool in it," Jozsi said in relief after the extraction procedure.

The 60-year-old who had the drill head lodged in his lungs for four days now keeps it on a shelf at home to remind him of the ordeal.

dentist
representational image pixabay
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