Spontaneous expulsion of 10 years retained intrathoracic foreign body (bullet) from left main bronchus: A case report

A foreign body lodged in the tracheobronchial tree is a serious and common medical emergency that can have serious and perhaps lethal consequences. A few cases have been reported in the literature for the last century with gunshot wounds to the chest that were handled non-operatively and finally expelled the bullet on their own. We present a case of a hemodynamically stable 50-year-old male with a 10-year-old penetrating thoracic gunshot wound, with the bullet found in the left main bronchus on computed tomography (CT) scan upon admission. Further examination found no evident erosive injuries, such as hemoptysis, but he did have empyema and required a thoracotomy for decortication. Shortly after discharge, he coughed out a bullet into the floor, which is why our case is so intriguing. This case demonstrated that a bronchial foreign body is seldom spontaneously expelled.