Radiopaque Grass Heads in the Lung

¹ The Student Health Service and the Departments of Surgery and Radiology, University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center.

The course followed by patients who aspirate panicles of certain grasses, known as "grass heads" is characterized by either (a) spontaneous passage through the lung and thoracic cage to the exterior or (b) the formation of chronic lung abscess and or bronchiectasis.

These are usually in the right lower lobe. In the two cases described it was possible to make a preoperative radiologic diagnosis of retained "grass head" in the lung more than a decade after the aspiration occurred.[see figure 3 and 4 in source pdf]

Both cases were successfully treated by resection of the foreign body together with the bronchiectatic pulmonary segments.

Routine photofluorograms showing evidence of basal pleuritis, particularly on the right side, should be studied for the possibility of retained foreign body.