Non-Accidental Foreign Body Ingestion Among Prisoners in Turkey

Accidental foreign body ingestion is a common health problem seen in childhood and adolescence all over the world. This single-center, retrospective, and descriptive study addressed the phenomenon of foreign body ingestion in the context of a specific patient population, i.e., the convicted patient population. To this end, convicted patients who applied to a tertiary hospital with the complaint of foreign body ingestion were investigated both in terms of health expenses and inappropriate use of limited labor resources. The study population consisted of 1381 patients who were treated for foreign body ingestion in the emergency department of the tertiary hospital where this study was conducted. Patients’ data were obtained from the electronic health records system [SARUS]. Patients under 18, patients with a swallowed foreign body outside the gastrointestinal tract, and those who were operated on due to foreign body ingestion by otorhinolaryngology and thoracic surgery were excluded from the study. In the end, the study sample comprised 67 hospitalized patients with a mean age of 41.4 SD16.2 years, 70.2% [n = 47] were men. It was determined that the rate of those who were admitted three times for foreign body ingestion was higher in the convicted patient group [8%], whereas the rate of those who were admitted only once [92.9 %] was higher in the non-convicted patient group; however, the differences were not statistically significant. In conclusion, measures should be taken to reduce the means of convicted patients accessing objects that can be swallowed in the immediate environment, considering that they are subject to psychiatric disorders and recurrent hospitalizations more than non-convicted patients.