A toddler arrives drooling with suspected button-battery ingestion and a school-age child presents with sudden choking and inspiratory stridor after inhaling a peanut. Both need airway and ingested foreign body assessment without delay. Which soft tissue neck and foreign body imaging approach should the technologist use for airway versus ingestion?

Correct protocol uses AP and lateral soft tissue neck in neutral plus chest with inspiratory-expiratory views because drooling implies possible esophageal button-battery impaction requiring level, halo sign and airway effect, while inspiratory stridor after peanut implies radiolucent obstruction requiring detection of air trapping, shift and atelectasis visible only on phase comparison. The neck-alone neutral assessment is proper positioning for stridor but fails coverage by omitting thorax, so battery migrated below inlet and lower-airway obstructive emphysema remain unseen. The neck-plus-chest inspiratory-only method gives correct anatomy with efficient motion control but fails physiology by omitting expiration, so ball-valve trapping that looks near normal on inspiration is missed. The neck-plus-abdomen dual-phase method preserves dynamics and tracks ingestion distally but fails targeting by replacing chest with abdomen, leaving larynx, trachea and lungs inadequately evaluated for aspiration. Exam caveat is that battery is a corrosive time-critical emergency and stridor can decompensate rapidly, so do not delay for contrast, maneuvers or cross-sectional imaging when the ordered airway series answers level and ventilation. Practical check is to confirm history, keep neutral without compression, obtain true inspiration and expiration including nasopharynx to lungs with soft-tissue technique, and immediately flag battery level or asymmetric lucency.