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In the Soup: Caustic Ingestion from the Improper Consumption of a Self-Heating Soup
Abstract
We present a caustic ingestion case from the improper preparation of a self-heating soup can. A 54 year old man cut apart a self-heating canister of OnTech® Hillside Tomato soup and consumed the calcium oxide heating material with the soup. He presented to the ED with odynophagia and pharyngeal irritation. A normal chest radiograph, and computed tomography (CT) scan of chest, and several normal laboratory studies were obtained. Emergent esophagogastroduodenoscopy was performed due to worsening symptoms despite narcotic analgesia. This is the first known case of its kind, where a self-heating chemical agent was mixed with food and ingested. [West J Emerg Med. 2012;13(5):426-428.]