A Novel Approach to Management of Esophageal Pill Impaction.

A 26-year-old male presented with symptoms of acute esophageal obstruction immediately after swallowing an 800-mg ibuprofen tablet. Multiple attempts to extract the pill with a variety of traditional endoscopic retrieval devices were unsuccessful. We successfully destroyed the pill using a threaded-tip biliary stent retrieval device to drill a hole in the center of the pill, which allowed us to use a rat-tooth forceps to crush the pill. This case report demonstrates a novel use of this device in a challenging esophageal pill extraction.