Traumatic epiglottitis after foreign body ingestion.

Epiglottitis is a rare but life-threatening emergency. The etiology of epiglottitis may be infectious or, less commonly, non-infectious. Causes of non-infectious epiglottitis as reported in the literature include thermal injury, caustic ingestion, and foreign body ingestion. Epiglottitis related to foreign body ingestion has been reported in the literature as an injury due to attempts at retrieval using a blind finger sweep. We report a case of epiglottitis following ingestion and spontaneous expulsion of a bottle cap in a 15-month-old boy.