The "wandering needle".

Suspected aspiration of a radiopaque foreign body can easily be confirmed by a chest film. We report a case of a boy with chest-film confirmed aspiration of a needle into his right main bronchus, in whom no needle was found during bronchoscopy. In retrospect, the boy had expectorated the needle without noticing it in the interval between making the diagnosis and the actual bronchoscopy. We propose to reconfirm aspiration of a radiopaque foreign body by fluoroscopy shortly before commencing bronchoscopy.