Generalized acute peritonitis due to digestive perforation due to a foreign body is rare. The majority of small intestine perforations are "covered", a consequence of the very high mobility of the intestinal-mesenteric structures that easily cover these perforations, regardless of the anatomical location [2].
It seems to affect adults as much as children. Ingestion is generally accidental, during a playful activity in children [3] or intentional or even accidental due to poor eating habits (fast food, argument during the meal, etc.) in adults [4, 5].
The nature and shape of the foreign body causing the perforation is variable. These may be sharp objects such as toothpicks [9], fish bones [2, 6, 7, 8], sharp bone fragments from minced meat, metal needles, plant stems [2] or less aggressive foreign bodies, button batteries [1] and finally whole chicken bones [9], like our patient.
The clinical picture may be one of febrile occlusion or immediately one of acute peritonitis; an abdominal CT scan may be useful for a definitive diagnosis.
Midline laparotomy, like our case, remains the most reported surgical approach [11, 1, 6]. However, laparoscopy is now an alternative recommended in cases of acute peritonitis and used by some authors in this indication [5] in order to suture the perforation.
