A Cows-Foot Bone Stuck in Her Esophagus

This may be the only published medical account of how to remove a cows-foot bone that’s stuck in a patient’s esophagus:

“A Foreign Body Larger Than the Overtube Diameter: A Case of a Large Cow Foot Bone Causing Esophageal Impaction,” Arun Swaminath, MD, Aimee Lee Lucas, MD, Kristina Capiak, BFA, Amrita Sethi, MD, and Reuben Garcia-Carrasquillo, MD, Gastroenterology and Hepatology, 2010 December; 6(12): 793–795. The authors, at Columbia University Presbyterian Hospital, New York City, report:

“A 46-year-old, otherwise healthy Dominican woman presented with a foreign body sensation. She had been eating cow foot soup, which contains small pieces of cow foot occasionally made with intact bones, when she felt a large bone become stuck in the back of her throat. She attempted to remove the bone with her fingers but eventually swallowed it. The patient immediately felt a sharp, sticking sensation in her neck and presented to the emergency department for evaluation…. Dedicated neck films demonstrated a large radiopaque foreign body lodged in the cervical esophagus. To our knowledge, this case is the first report in the literature describing esophageal impaction of a cow foot bone with a description of the retrieval process.”

BONUS: Her (a different her) Hairball Came from Eating Cows-Feet Soup