Tom Jozsi accidentally inhales inch long dental drill during procedure that ended up getting stuck in his lungs for 4 days until a solution to remove device was found.
An Illinois man recently undergoing a routine dental treatment was left with a drill bit in his lungs after ‘accidentally’ inhaling the device.
Tom Jozsi, 60, was getting a tooth filled when an errant breath caused him to accidentally inhale an inch-long drill bit.
‘I was at the dentist getting a tooth filled, and then next thing I know I was told I swallowed this tool,‘ Jozsi told WISN 12 News. ‘I didn’t really even feel it going down. All I felt was a cough.’
A CT scan showed that the drill bit ended up in the maintenance worker’s lungs, and not his stomach.
‘When they did the CT scan they realized, you didn’t swallow it. You inhaled it,’ Jozsi recalled.
‘What happens if he can’t get it out?,’
‘I didn’t really even feel it going down. All I felt was a cough,’ Jozsi told KFVS.
Doctors said the drill went so deep because Jozsi inhaled.
The patient was initially told the only way to remove it was to cut out the piece of lung that it was lodged in.
‘I was asked, what happens if he can’t get it out?,’ Jozsi said.
‘And really, the answer was that part of my lung was going to have to get removed.’
Pulmonary expert Dr. Abdul Alraiyes, who treated Jozsi at the Aurora Medical Center in nearby Kenosha, Wisconsin, tried to retrieve the drill bit with normal scopes but it was too deep in the lung.
‘When I saw the cat scan, and where that object is sitting, it was really far down on the right lower lobe of the lung,’ Alraiyes told WISN.
Happy solution
Rather than opting for surgery, Alraiyes and his team decided to try getting the stuck drill out with a catheter normally used ‘for early detection of cancer, especially lung cancer,’ the pulmonologist said.
Thanks to the ‘size of the catheter,’ Alraiyes said, he and his team were able to go into Jozsi’s lung and remove the drill bit safely, without causing any damage or irritation. And four days after inhaling the drill bit, Jozsi awoke to see that it was finally out.
‘I was never so happy as when I opened my eyes, and I saw him with a smile under that mask shaking a little plastic container with the tool in it,’ Jozsi said.
The drill bit is now proudly displayed on a shelf at his home, Jozsi said.
