Percutaneous Removal of Difficult Pulmonary Artery Foreign Body: A Rare Case Report

Endovascular catheterization is now more frequently used for various endovascular procedures and central venous access. Sometimes, catheterization causes rare complication when parts of the catheter break and can embolize to the main heart chambers, main pulmonary arteries and to other vascular sub-branches as a foreign body and can cause thrombophlebitis, endocarditis, vascular occlusion and thrombosis [1]. Migrated pulmonary artery foreign bodies are rare life threatening conditions and earliest reported in literature over 50 years ago (2). It carries a high mortality and morbidity if the foreign body is not removed timely (3). Surgical and non-surgical methods for removal of these foreign bodies have been described in the past (4). Percutaneous removal is highly effective with a low complication rate and should be the first line intervention (5). One of the most commonly used device is a single loop snare, but sometimes it may be hard to retrieve the foreign body with single loop snare. In this case, we report the successful percutaneous retrieval of the broken catheter guide wire from the pulmonary artery by using multiple loop snare devices.