Girl saved at Hadera hospital after she inhales hat pin

3.5-centimeter-long sharp hat pin was extracted by doctors at Hillel Jaffe Medical Center.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Prof. Braverman with hat pin and patient 370 (photo credit: Courtesy Hillel Jaffe Medical Center)
Prof. Braverman with hat pin and patient 370
(photo credit: Courtesy Hillel Jaffe Medical Center)
A 16-year-old girl who inhaled a 3.5-centimeter-long sharp hat pin while laughing was rescued by doctors at Hillel Jaffe Medical Center in Hadera on Monday night.
The teen, from Baka al-Gharbiya, was treated by Associate Prof. Yitzhak Braverman, head of the Ear, Nose and Throat and Head and Neck Surgery Unit, who pulled the pin out of her vocal cords where it was stuck and nearly blocked her trachea.
She had worn the pin to hold her head scarf and held the sharp object in her mouth to reorder the scarf. Suddenly, she inhaled the pin when she laughed. Braverman was alerted and asked to come in because of the very problematic location of the pin and at an angle that made it likely that it could fall into her trachea. The procedure of inserting an opticfiber endoscope was performed under local anesthetic and Braverman managed to pull it out.
Braverman said it wasn’t the first time that he encountered such an incident. He recommended that when women arrange their scarves not to hold pins in their mouths. The same is true for bobby pins. In some cases, general anesthesia is needed for surgery, which could end in death.