Rhinolithiasis of the child: about a case

Rhinolithiasis is a rare disease, relatively common in underdeveloped countries. It occurs at any age, rarer in the child than in the adult. In childhood, rhinolith has an exogenous mechanism; it is usually constituted on an ignored or neglected foreign body. It is characterized by a non-specific symptomatology, such as an epistaxis that can sometimes reveal the rhinolith. The diagnosis is made at rigid endoscopy, sometimes at the CT scan which allows the local evaluation of the lesions. The extraction of the rhinolith is mainly carried out by the nostrils. We report the clinical case of a 10-year-old child in whom rhinolithiasis was discovered by recurrent epistaxis of low abundance. In this case, the rhinolith has exceptionally a compact structure, a mechanism most probably endogenous. It was associated with a septal deviation, an inferior turbinal hypertrophy and a synechia of the nasal mucosa around the rhinolith.