[Foreign bodies in the upper airways of children - problems relating to diagnosis and treatment].

The authors share their experience and systematic observations with regard to the correlation between "chronic pneumonia" and foreign bodies in the respiratory tract, based on a survey of 480 bronchoscopic examinations for a period of 10 years. It was established that misdiagnosed foreign bodies in the lower respiratory tract account for 12.5% of all these cases. The percentage of undiagnosed bilateral foreign bodies is unusually high, as well as that of the left-sided foreign bodies, although to a smaller degree. The study also shows that very often in pediatric practice foreign bodies are wrongly diagnosed as bronchopneumonia and bronchial asthma.