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Updated: Aug 16, 2026

Handheld Metal Detector Screening for Metallic Foreign Body Ingestion in Children
Published on: September 11, 2018
Radiographic evaluation of aspirated metallic foil foreign bodies
Richard D Orgill1, Thomas R Pasic, Walter W Peppler
1Division of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Department of Surgery, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53792-7375, USA.
Objectives:
Aspirated objects generally represent items accessible to children. When metallic candy wrapper aspiration is questioned, radiographic studies may aid diagnosis. An infant with repeated chest radiographs negative for a metallic foreign body was found to have a multi-layer metallic candy wrapper in the left main bronchus. The purpose of this study was to determine whether conventional and dual-energy radiographic techniques exclude the presence of aspirated metallic foil wrappers.
Methods:
Single-layer and multi-layer metallic candy wrappers were radiographically studied with conventional and dual-energy radiographic techniques in 3 tissue models.
Results:
No single-layer metallic samples were detectable with conventional or dual-energy radiography. The multilayer samples were not detectable at less than 8 layers (pulmonary tissue model) or 16 layers (mediastinal model) by either conventional or dual-energy radiography.
Conclusions:
Conventional and dual-energy chest radiographic techniques do not reliably exclude the presence of aspirated metallic foil wrappers.
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