Trachea, or WINDPIPE, that part of the air-passages which lies between the Larynx (q.v.) and the bronchi (see RESPIRATION). It is very rarely affected by disease of independent origin, though often secondarily by extension of laryngitis from above, or of bronchitis from below.
Foreign bodies occasionally pass through the larynx into the trachea. In cases of this kind the patient who has had some foreign substance in his mouth which is supposed to have been swallowed is seized with a convulsive cough, threatening suffocation, but subsiding after a time. The symptoms that then ensue vary with the weight and figure of the substance, and according as it is fixed or movable. A large and very irregular body may be impacted in the trachea, and may thus more or less obstruct the respiration on both sides of the chest; and this obstruction will probably soon be increased by the inflammatory products that are excited. A small heavy object will usually pass through the trachea into one of the bronchi (usually the right), or one of its branches, obstructing respiration to a less extent. While a foreign body remains in the air-passages there is always more or less risk of suffocation, though a piece of bone has been coughed up after sixty years in that situation. The attempt to remove it, however, has also risks; and inversion of the obstructing object, which is commonly resorted to, should not be tried unless tracheotomy either has been performed, or can be done at a moment's notice. If attempts at removal are unsuccessful the foreign substance may become encapsuled and quiescent; but it more often sets up organic lung disease (pneumonia, gangrene, &c.).