Ahlam Tahir from Ar'ara arrived at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center after swallowing a pin while putting on her hijab. Ahlam was holding the pin between her lips when she suddenly inhaled it into her lungs. She was rushed to Hillel Yaffe Medical Center and was examined there. A chest x-ray clearly showed the exact location of the pin inside her right lung. A
hlam was brought into the operating room for emergency surgery under general anesthesia. Her surgeons, Dr. Itzhak Braverman, Director of the ENT unit at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, and Dr. Dor Maayan, said that "the chest x-ray clearly showed the presence of a foreign object, but it was not entirely clear whether the pin was lodged in the lung or in the esophagus. We performed a CT on her lungs in order to identify its precise location. As the CT clearly showed that the pin was inside the right lung, we had no choice but to perform surgery immediately to extract the pin as quickly as possible to prevent pulmonary damage." The pin was safely extracted, and the patient was discharged. T
his was not the first time a surgical team treated a patient who had swallowed a pin while arranging her scarf. Two weeks ago, a similar case of a woman who had inhaled a pin was reported in the media. "Although arranging a headscarf is a routine and simple process, one small mistake can be life threatening," said Dr. Braverman.
Ahlam, Dr. Braverman and the pin