Actinomycotic cervical abscess: A complication of transtracheal aspiration

Transtracheal aspiration is frequently employed to obtain sputum for microbiologic analysis. Infectious complications of this procedure have been reported rarely. We report an actinomycotic anterior cervical abscess traversing the needle track of a transtracheal aspiration in a patient with actinomycotic pneumonia. Organisms most frequently encountered in anterior cervical abscesses complicating transtracheal aspiration have the recognized potential for local invasion of soft tissue from the primary pulmonary lesion.