Swallowed partial dentures

Mr Hashmi and his colleagues (February 2004 JRSM¹) do not cite a BMJ letter of mine in 1972 recording the retrieval, with difficulty, of a partial denture from the right main bronchus.² The prosthesis had been inhaled on diving into a swimming pool. My letter drew attention to a paper by Coman³ reporting three cases, of which the most alarming concerned a man who had inhaled his partial denture when parachuting. Another illustrated the hazard of metal clips to attach the prosthesis to neighbouring teeth: a hook caused a prosthesis to be stuck in the oesophagus for some 3 weeks, causing a para-oesophageal abscess. I suggested that it would be a wise precaution to remove these potentially lethal pieces of apparatus before engaging in violent exercise and probably also at night. I was, of course, thinking of lying on one's back mouth-breathing. However, a journalist clever in lateral thinking picked this up and, to my astonishment, I was telephoned by the Today programme to make a live comment about my recommendation of removing dentures before intercourse. Later I found myself surrounded by newspapers with headlines such as ‘Love peril of your false teeth’, ‘The safe way of making love... by gum’.