A routine visit to the dentist ended up with a man needing hospital treatment when he accidentally breathed in a drill bit.
Tom Jozsi, 60, went in for a filling, and didn’t even realise at first that he had inhaled the inch-long metal part.
His dentist told him he had swallowed a bit of a tool, and it was only later they realised it had actually lodged in his lung – which put him at risk of needing major surgery.
‘I didn’t really even feel it going down,’ Tom said. ‘All I felt was a cough.
‘When they did the CT scan they realised, ‘You didn’t swallow it. You inhaled it”.’
Tom, from Illinois, told WISN-TV that if doctors failed to fish it out with a special device, he would need to have part of his lung removed.
Doctors believe that Tom inhaled just before he coughed, sending the bit deep down his airways.
Images from the scan show how the long and pointed bit was stuck inside the right lower lobe of his lung.
Dr Abdul Alraiyes, from Aurora Medical Centre-Kenosha in Wisconsin, said the bit lodged so far that normal scopes could not reach it.
He and his medical team decided to try a newer device to remove the object – one that is designed for early detection of cancer, rather than removing foreign objects.
Video of the scan shows how they managed to navigate the narrow airways, reach the drill piece and pull it out without harming Tom.
Camera footage even shows how they pulled the drill piece out through Tom’s throat.
‘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,’ Tom said.
As a memento of the experience, he said he now keeps the drill bit on a shelf at home.
Meanwhile, his doctor said colleagues in Michigan and Ohio have reported seeing similar cases – giving us one more thing to think about before getting into the dentist’s chair.
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